Golan was situated in Bashan, in the tribe of Manasseh, among the pastoral hills north of the lake of Gennesaret. It formed the most northerly Refuge-Sanctuary on the east side of Jordan, as Kedesh did on the west; but there are no particular events connected with it in Bible story.
What does the name of this last City of Refuge tell us regarding Jesus?
Golan literally signifies Joy. Jesus is truly the Golan of His people; they may have many others, but He is their “chief joy!” Well may they call Him Golan; for not one joy could have ever visited them had it not been for Him. The world would have been to them, from first to last, a “valley of Baca,” (weeping,) had not Jesus died for their sins, and saved their souls. Well might the angel say, when he came to the plains of Bethlehem to announce the Saviour's birth, “Behold, I bring you good tidings of GREAT JOY!”
There is not one step the Christian takes but Jesus is Golan to him—“joy.” He is straying, a lost sheep on the dark mountains, in search of peace: Jesus meets him, and says, “Your sins are all forgiven you;”—he is joyful at that. He is wandering a prodigal from his Father's house: Jesus brings him to his lost home, and calls him His own child; and he is joyful at that. He has to travel a long and dreary journey ere he reaches his true home in heaven: Jesus gives him His arm to lean upon; and he “goes on his way rejoicing.” He has many fiery trials to try him: Jesus tells him not to think these “strange,” but rather to “rejoice,” inasmuch as He is “partaker with him in his sufferings.”[51] He has, at last, to walk through the dark Valley: Jesus meets him there, and supports him there. He sees “the King in His beauty,” and the land that is yet “afar off;” and, believing, “he rejoices with joy unspeakable and full of glory.”[52] When Jesus beholds him from His throne in judgment, what are to be His blessed words of welcome? “Enter ye into the JOY of your Lord.”[53] And when, as a ransomed one, he enters the streets of the New Jerusalem, at whose feet is it that he is to cast, through all eternity, his crown? “In thy presence,” O Saviour God, is “fullness of JOY!”
Young reader, love often to gaze on the walls of this City of Refuge. The sacred writer, in giving the list of these six cities, seems to have kept it to the last because it is a happy word, and speaks of the happy prospects of all those that love the Lord Jesus. Believe me, there is no true joy but in God. The joy of the wicked is like that of a noisy stream—noisy because it is shallow. The joy, on the other hand, which Jesus gives, is like a great river,—deep, calm, ever-flowing, overflowing;—not full in winter and dry in summer, but full, and clear, and refreshing all the year long. It may be always truly said of Jesus, the great Gospel Refuge, and of those who have fled to Him, what was said of old about Samaria, “There was great JOY in that CITY.”[54] It was the object of all that Christ did and said on earth to give you this joy. “These things have I spoken unto you,” says He, “that my JOY might remain in you, and that your JOY might be full.”[55] Love Him now, and serve Him now and follow Him now, that you may come at last to the true Golan, in His glorious presence above, and “REJOICE evermore!”
“Then in a nobler, sweeter song,
I'll sing Thy power to save,
When this poor lisping, stammering tongue
Lies silent in the grave.
“Lord, I believe Thou hast prepared,
Unworthy though I be,
For me a blood-bought, free reward,
A golden harp for me!
“'Tis strung, and tuned, for endless years,
And form'd, by power divine,
To sound in God the Father's ears
No other NAME but Thine!”