All about Relationships

Relationships Duet. 21
Someone recently told, me something like, Christianity is really all about relationships. In this he meant that it wasn’t so much about demonstrating concern for the victims of this holocaust but rather more about personal relationships with friends, family and other Christians.
  I believe that Christianity is much about relationships but not so much in the manner that he believes that it is.
 Let’s look at the various relationships in Duet. 21.
 1“If a person who has been killed by someone is found lying in the open country in the land which the LORD your God is giving you to possess, and it is not known who struck him, 2then your elders and your judges shall go out and measure the distance to the cities which are around the one who was killed. 3And it shall be that the city which is nearest to the person killed, that is, that the elders of that city shall take a heifer of the herd that has not been worked [b]and has not pulled in a yoke; 4and the elders of that city shall bring the heifer down to a valley with running water, which has not been plowed or sown, and they shall break the heifer’s neck there in the valley. 5Then the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come forward, because the LORD your God has chosen them to serve Him and to bless in the name of the LORD; and every dispute and violent crime shall be [d]settled by them. 6And all the elders of that city [e]which is nearest to the person killed shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley; 7and they shall respond and say, ‘Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see who did. 8Forgive Your people Israel whom You have redeemed, LORD, and do not place the guilt for innocent blood in the midst of Your people Israel.’ And the guilt for bloodshed shall be [g]forgiven them. 9So you shall remove the guilt for innocent blood from your midst, when you do what is right in the eyes of the LORD.
Characters
“Person” – This guy was the victim. A “person” = Fellow human being and image bearer of God, at least somebody’s neighbor.
His relationship with God. Consider the first murder in the Bible. In Gen. 4 when Cain killed his brother Able, God said “your brother’s blood is crying to Me from the ground.” Can we presume that Cain’s blood was crying out for justice? God is a just God and in Isaiah 1:17 when calling His people to repentance says “Learn to do good; Seek justice, Rebuke the oppressor, Obtain justice for the orphan, Plead for the widow’s case.”
 Since this man was obviously killed then there was “bloodguilt” associated with his death.
 God takes “bloodguilt” very seriously. Here are some of the scriptures about bloodguilt.
Blood Guilt: Gen. 4:10; Gen. 9:5-7; Gen. 32:10; 42:22 Exo. 21:22; 22:2+3; 23:7; Lev. 25:17; Numbers 35:34; Duet. 18:10; Duet. 19:10+13; Duet. 21:1-9.; Duet. 22:8; Duet. 27:25; Lev. 17:4; 7:11; 7:14; LEV. 20:2-6+9+11-13+16+27; Judges 9:24; Judges 19:29; 1 Sam. 18:56; 1Sam. 19:5; 1 Sam. 25:31; 2 Sam 2:16;  2 Sam 2:28-29; 2 Sam 4:11; 2Sam 4:11; 2 Sam 21:1b; 1 Kings 2:5 +31+32 (Joab); 2 Kings 3:27; 2 Kings 10:9; 2 Kings 16:3; 2Kings 17:17+31; 2Kings 21:6+16; 2 Kings 23:10+26-27 & **24:3+4;  1 Chron. 22:8; 2 Chron. 28:3 (burned his sons); 2 Chron 33:6; Jonah 1:12-14b; PS. 5:6; 51:14; Prov. 28.17; Isa. 1:15; 5:7; 26:21b; 59:3 & 7;Is. Ch1; Jer. 3:34; 51:35; Lam. 4:13-14; Ezek. 8:12 (things done in secret); Ezek. 8:18b (God won’t listen because “they filled the land with violence) + Ezek. 12:19; Ezek. 16:20-21; Ezek. 22:1-4 + 6+7+12+13+27; 23:37+39; Ezek. 33:25 (idolatry); Ezek. 35:6 (did not hate bloodshed); Ezek. 36:18; Hos.  1:4b + 6:8; Hos. 1:4; 9:16 (God calls the babies in the womb Precious even as He causes miscarriages): Hos. 12:14; Joel 3:19; Amos 1:23; Hab. 2:8+12+17; Matt. 23:34-36; Matt. 27:4; Acts 5:28; God sends prophets to them  = their blood guilt is increased; Luke11:50-51
Someone - The person or persons that killed the guy. We are not told much about them and that is kind of the point. The Elders and Judges don’t know who the killer or killers are.
Elders and Judges – These are the leaders of Israel. The spiritual authorities.
Their relationship with God is to meet His demands of them to seek justice.  They have a relationship with God but very little with the victim other than that he is a person and fellow image bearer and neighbor whom they are called to love as themselves. He is dead so they can’t do much in the way of loving him but they can show respect to him and seek justice for him.
 They cannot bandage his wounds and put him on their donkey and take him to an Inn to help him, like the Good Samaritan in Luke 10 did. Good Sam showed up when still had an opportunity to spare the man’s life by giving aid.
The cities around the crime – The nearest city is the place where the inhabitants may have heard the man cry out or witnessed the killing. The soldiers that liberated the extermination camp of Auschwitz made the people of the town walk through the camp and witness the atrocities that they had allowed they even made them bury the corpses. They seemed to have some grasp of bloodguilt. Pilate voiced some understanding of that bloodguilt when he said “I was my hands of this man’s blood”. The sailors on the ship that Jonah was on said “We earnestly pray, O LORD, do not let us perish on account of this man’s life, and do not put innocent blood on us; for You, LORD, have done as You pleased.”   
:5 the Priest, the sons of Levi – The context of the passage reveals that they are the people that God chose to serve Him and they have the obligation to judge disputes and have authority to impart justice and make sacrifices.
The Elders of the nearest city – These men are to wash their hand over the sacrifice, similar to what Pilate did, and have to be able to say “Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see who did”.  Like “We didn’t kill this guy & we don’t know who did”. The implication is that if they were able to find out who killed the man then they would be required to bring him to justice.
These Elders also need to pray 2 things – 1. Forgive Your people Israel whom You have redeemed, LORD, and 2. do not place the guilt for innocent blood in the midst of Your people Israel.
Forgive for what? – The only thing that I can come up with was that they did not provide protection for the victim.
 The prerequisite for the people not having the “guilt of innocent blood” was that religious leaders had to not have seen who did the killing, seek justice and when they failed to protect the victim and bring about justice they still had to make a sacrifice.
Look at the last sentence of this section. Verse 9 says “So you shall remove the guilt for innocent blood from your midst, when you do what is right in the eyes of the LORD”
What was doing right in the eyes of the Lord and how does it apply to us today?
In our culture or city or times who is the closest person to the victim in this passage?
 Within a short drive of most churches or where we live there are persons killed in abortion clinics; in Doctor’s offices; in hospitals; in invitro fertilization clinics and there are chemicals provided to kill these small humans (our neighbors) so that they can be flushed down the toilets running to the same sewer systems that we use.
 Can our Christian leaders say “Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see who did”?
  Without much effort they can be made aware of the victims and they can know who killed them. Can they ask for forgiveness when they have put forth no effort to bring about justice or to offer protection to the victims?
 Or do they respond like Cain? Cain was a liar and a blasphemer. He lied when he said that he did not know and he blasphemed when he talked back to God saying “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
 Shall we look to the Bible & our Christianity as a “Self-help” guide to our family and friend relationships or will we learn the heart of God in these matters. God is a God of Justice and a God of Love.
  All the law and the Prophets are fulfilled in these 2 commands.
 Love God and Love your neighbor.
 For the fallen victims of this holocaust, we must seek justice for them because we know who killed them.
For those who are yet to be slain we have an obligation to defend them.
Proverbs 24:10-12
10If you show yourself lacking courage on the day of distress,
Your strength is meager.
11Rescue those who are being taken away to death,
And those who are staggering to the slaughter, Oh hold them back!
12If you say, “See, we did not know this,”
Does He who weighs the hearts not consider it?
And does He who watches over your soul not know it?
And will He not repay a person according to his work?