Welcome to the Lansdale Life Church podcast.
If you're seeking a closer relationship with Jesus Christ, this podcast is for you.
Thank you for joining us today.
Well, I guess we can get started.
We're gonna be in Joshua chapter 20 tonight, so you guys can turn there if you want.
Yeah, sure.
Can I just grab it, too?
You got the cord, but that's okay, right?
All right, hopefully I don't take too many things down with me tonight.
All right, good evening.
Welcome to Wednesday Night Bible Study.
Tonight we're gonna be in Joshua chapter 20.
We're gonna be talking about the cities of refuge, and it's really three things I want to touch on tonight.
The first one will be, I want to explain the context and go through the verses and also look at the six categories of killing
that are dealt with in the Bible.
And then we're gonna look at some commonalities between the English common law and the Bible
and how English common law built on the Bible.
Not exclusively, but how a lot of what we believe in our legal system is rooted in Scripture.
And then we're gonna talk a little bit about the justice of God and how this all ties in.
So, maybe a little bit heavy on the mind at first, but then we're gonna tie it in with some heart stuff.
But actually, in the Hebrew worldview, the mind or the heart did the thinking and the feeling.
So, I'm not really sure what the mind did, but yeah, so why don't we read Joshua chapter 20.
It's only nine verses.
So verse one.
And if the avenger of blood pursues him, they shall not give up the manslayer into his hand, because he struck his neighbor unknowingly and did not hate him in the past.
And he shall remain in that city until he has stood before the congregation for judgment, until the death of him who is the high priest at the time.
Then the manslayers may return to his own home and his own town, to the town from which he fled.
So they set apart Kadesh in Galilee, in the hill country of Naphtali, and Shechem in the hill country of Ephraim, and Kiryat Arba, that is Hebron, in the hill country of Judah.
And beyond the Jordan, east of Jericho, they appointed Bezer, in the wilderness, on the table land, from the tribe of Reuben, and Ramot, in Gilead, from the tribe of Gad, and Golan, in Bashan, from the tribe of Manasseh.
These were the cities designated for all the people of Israel, and for the strangers sojourning among them, that anyone who killed a person without intent could flee there, so that he might not die by the hand of the avenger of blood, until he stood before the congregation.
So let's just pray. Lord, we thank you for your word. Lord, we thank you for Joshua chapter 20.
And Lord, we just pray that you would give us spirit of wisdom and revelation tonight, that you would open our eyes, that we might see you more clearly.
Lord, and we just do lift up Tevin and his family. Lord, we ask that you would be with them during this tragedy.
Lord, and we just pray for your peace and comfort to be on everybody, in Jesus' name. Amen.
So, this scripture is dealing with some legal items that were prescribed in the Old Testament.
Specifically, this is the Old Testament, but specifically in the Torah, and Joshua and the Israelites are marking out some cities for a specific legal provision that deals with a specific type of killing.
Now, just a couple things we can look in the verses. So in verse 2, they set aside the cities of refuge, or that word, by the way, we're in Joshua chapter 20.
So Joshua chapter 20 verse 2 says, appoint the cities of refuge. Now, the word refuge could also mean asylum. So these are like asylum cities.
So they're setting aside the cities. If we look at verse 3, it says, the manslayer who strikes any person without intent or unknowingly may flee there.
So the word manslayer basically is a Hebrew word that just means killer, but it's a broad term.
And in the next section, or just in a minute, I'm going to go through the four Hebrew words that deal with killing or killer.
And I'll kind of line them out for you. We won't go too deep, but just like a brief overview.
But this word manslayer, you could also translate it as killer. But the second word in there that's key is the word strikes.
And this word has to do with not as much murder, but more just in a broad sense of killing somebody.
So I'll make it more clear just in a minute. But then in verse 4, the cities are pointed for fleeing to.
And then one thing that's key that comes up a couple of times is that the actual category that this fits in of murder is called manslaughter,
which it means you're killing somebody, but you're not killing them. Look at verse 3, it says, you're killing them without intent or unknowingly.
So if you accidentally drop something, or it's kind of hard to think of a lot of circumstances in which you would accidentally strike somebody and kill them.
But if this was like, you know, maybe he's riding his horse quickly at night and somebody steps out in the road without hearing the horse coming by in his carriage or his horse strikes this man or woman, and then they end up dying, then that would be a good example.
I mean, the best example we have in modern days, and sorry, this can be maybe a little graphics part of this because it has to do with killing and murder.
But would be like vehicular manslaughter, where like you're driving, somebody runs out in the road, you try to stop, and you're not able to stop, or someone's not able to stop in time.
It wasn't your intention. And you didn't have any knowing, you didn't plan it, you didn't try it. So it's not classified as murder.
Another part of this, let's see if it says it in here exactly.
But I know that, oh yeah, if you look at verse five, it says, struck his neighbor unknowingly and did not hate him in the past.
And so he didn't, he, there was no, this speaks to the motive part of it. So there was no ill will there.
And there was, there'd be no reason probable cause as to why this would, you know, the guy would unintentionally kill his neighbor.
So anyway, let's say this happened. This is kind of a strange section in scripture, because what happens is, let's say you're driving your carriage, your horse, and you hit somebody,
and they pass away. And now what do you do? Right? It wasn't your fault necessarily. It was unintentional. You didn't try it.
But now the Bible says that you have to flee, and the Lord allows the people who committed this to flee to one of these cities.
And then actually, the Bible allows one of these people's family members to actually go and chase down the person who unintentionally committed this act.
Now, there's not a whole lot of other context given here. But I could assume that, let's say, that you could probably pass on attacking the person.
Right? And if, if you didn't want to go after the person who committed the manslaughter, then you could probably say, hey, I just, I know that guy. He's a good guy.
And he didn't do it. You know, he and my brother and father were friends. But the Bible also says that the Bible doesn't say in this section that you can't go after that person.
And so the phrase there, avenger of blood, which is, let's see which verse is, which verse is that in verse three? Yes, exactly. Verse three.
So that word avenger can also mean redeemer. That's the same word that the Bible uses for redeemer. So the redeemer of blood, the one to go and redeem the family of that blood that was lost.
So it's, it's a very interesting thing. And then when the person who committed the manslaughter, they arrive at one of the cities of refuge, they get a hearing in front of the council of elders.
And, you know, I assume it's not really in the text, but I assume that the council of elders will either, you know, pronounce him guilty or not guilty.
And then if he's guilty, he will get the requisite punishment, which if you are actually guilty of murder in the Old Testament, it was a capital punishment.
So you would be executed. And then if he was pronounced not guilty or innocent, then he would have to wait in that city of refuge until the high priest at the time would pass away.
So it's kind of some very interesting things. I'm sure there's a lot more cultural nuance going on within this section than we're privy to since so long ago.
And we were very removed from this context. But I imagine that if he had to live there for a long time and he was the main provider for his family, that his family would probably get up and go join him in that city.
And they would start a new life in that city. And he and the man wouldn't or whoever committed the murder, just saying it's a man, the person who committed the murder wouldn't be allowed to leave that city limit or else the avenger of blood could come and kill that person.
So it's interesting. It leaves the section without things being wrapped up nice and tight, like so many Old Testament passages leave us kind of at a bit of a wondering, like, okay, Lord, what's that all about?
Or, you know, why would if he was actually innocent, why would you allow the avenger to go and avenge the blood if he was actually innocent? Right.
And so, you know, we have some theories and I'll share a little bit towards the end of kind of how I think that reconciles. But it is a bit puzzling and perplexing as I was studying this.
But I think one of the things that I found interesting over the years is the difference in the way the Bible treats different kinds of killings.
And from a legal perspective, I find this interesting and you may or may not find this interesting, but I'm just going to run through the six broad categories that the Bible has for different types of killings.
So the first one is easy. It's the one in the Ten Commandments is thou shall not kill and it's thou shall not murder.
So it's forbidden and it's deserving of judgment. And the key characteristics are that it's intentional, it's unjustified, and it's outside of God's legal order.
And God condemns this kind of killing. And so normally it's pre premeditated or you have hate towards somebody and you just in your anger, as Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, in anger, you kill that person.
And so that's like the first category. I think that one's pretty obvious.
Some key passages would be Exodus 20, verse 13, Genesis nine, verse six, where after the flood, God lays out different laws and provisions for mankind to follow.
And he says, you shall not shed the blood of one of your brothers or blood should be required of you.
So that would be the first category. The second category is the one we're looking at tonight, which is an accidental killing, which is manslaughter.
So it's not murder and it's protected through the cities of refuge as we see here.
And so this is actually a pretty advanced legal framework for a country or a people so long ago.
I think a lot of times we can look back on the ancient world and be like, oh, wow, they were pretty developed.
But I mean, they and kind of a bit of condescending way, if you catch what I'm saying.
But actually, they were very well developed and nuanced in their perspective on these things.
And the the person would have been innocent, not causing a death or of they were they caused a death, but they were not guilty of murder.
And he receives protection. He receives a hearing. He may live in the city of refuge and he's protected from revenge.
And this is one of the earliest legal distinctions between murder and manslaughter that we have on record.
So the third category would be judicial execution. And this would be permitted under Israel's covenant law.
We see that I just mentioned Genesis nine verse six, where the Lord says, if you take somebody's life, then blood will be required of you.
And so they had judicial execution for certain crimes underneath the Old Testament law.
Now, as far as I've researched it and we don't have a lot of case law to lean on because it was all oral.
But I've heard that throughout the ages, the Jewish people didn't really enforce capital punishment that often.
So take that for what it's worth. That's just kind of something I read somewhere.
I can't remember where. And I don't think the guy was such a, you know, it wasn't a big name that you'd probably know him anyway.
But take that for what it's worth. But there is a provision for judicial execution.
Number four, would it be warfare? So the Bible makes a distinction between murder and manslaughter and also killing in war.
And warfare was not was not forbidden underneath God's law.
And Israel defended itself against attacking nations.
And the Lord even commanded certain wars and some battles, particularly during the conquest of Canaan.
And these were presented as specific divine judgments.
And examples of this would be Joshua, like we were going through and Deuteronomy 20 as well.
And the interesting thing about the warfare, and this is kind of echoed in Romans 12 as well,
where the Lord raises up armies to judge and nations to judge other nations is the Lord uses war very specifically.
We see this in the Old Testament. He uses war as judgment against other nations.
And so the Israelites are judging the Canaanites because of their wickedness and their iniquity.
And a couple of months ago, I talked a little bit about the depth of the depravity that the Canaanites were involved in.
Mass child sacrifice, mass cult prostitution, and all types of demonic pagan worship.
So we can think, oh, you know, there's just like the guy down the street was, you know, attacked by an army.
But really, this was like a culture that was so perverted that, you know,
we have certain instances where like the angels come to visit lot and the townspeople are literally banging down the door because they want to know,
know, if you know what I'm saying, they want to know the new messengers, you know.
And this is just to show you like the Lord is judging these kinds of communities.
And the Lord obviously, he knows the hearts and intentions of men.
He knows how wicked or good our intentions are.
And so when he raises up the army to go and execute judgment, we can trust that his judgment is just.
And so warfare is not condemned by God in the Old Testament.
In the New Testament, you might have some differing opinions.
But we see in Romans 12 that the Lord does raise up armies to go and judge other nations.
But I will let that's really not the main thrust of this message here to debate pacifism or not.
I'm not a pacifist, but yeah, there's a debate there to be had.
But I think an important distinction is that thou shall not kill would say, OK,
I think a lot of pacifists use that as an argument to say, well, I shouldn't go to war because the Lord commands not to kill.
But the type of killing that the Lord is forbidding is murder.
It's not killing in battle.
Self-defense. Some of us are going to get more excited about this than others.
But one example of self-defense appears in Exodus chapter 22.
This is a very interesting case.
Gun enthusiasts will love this one.
But in Exodus chapter 22, he says, verse 2,
If a thief is found breaking in and is struck so that he dies, there shall be no blood guilt for him.
So here we have a thief breaking into somebody's house.
And if the owner of the house is awakened and they kill that person for breaking into their house,
it says that the person who defended their house is not liable for any blood guilt.
So that's another instance where killing would not be or it's a different category of killing.
Personal revenge is another category.
But the Lord forbids this one. He says that vengeance is mine.
And so we are not to take revenge against other individuals.
And an example would include the cities of refuge.
Probably part of the reason these were instituted was to prevent blood feuds.
Because if you understand anything about even today, you could think about it like Middle Eastern tribal culture.
If you kill some relative of somebody, then the oldest male has to go and kill the person who killed that person.
And then it just kicks off. Even in Turkey, they would call it like a blood feud.
And it was just endless killing between different tribal parties.
And so this is instituted in order to prevent that.
So those are the six categories.
Just to run through them again, we have murder, which is forbidden.
Accidental killing, which is manslaughter, which is what we see in Joshua 20.
Judicial execution, which is given provision underneath Genesis 9 and Exodus 21 specifically under the Torah.
Warfare, sometimes committed or permitted by God.
Self-defense and personal revenge.
So self-defense is allowed in some circumstances.
And personal revenge is forbidden.
So intent really matters.
And that's one thing that was really key within the Old Testament framework.
Especially within the cities of refuge that if it was unknowingly and you didn't have hate against your brother,
then it would fall into the manslaughter category.
And so just real quick to wrap up this section, we have four terms in Hebrew that deal with killing.
So the first one is rot sock, which is murder and unlawful killing.
So this one actually is the one where it says in the Ten Commandments, thou shall not kill.
And the same root of this word is used for the word manslayer in Joshua 20.
But when the noun is used, apparently they say that the term is a little bit broader.
But there's a broader term for kill and slay, which is dealing with warfare, executions, and general killing.
And that word is harag, which the words aren't really important, but I'll give them to you anyway.
And then there's another word called mut, which is caused to die or put to death, legal executions, general death.
And then naka, which is strike or smite, which can result in death or injury.
And so within Joshua 20, you have the noun of rot sock, which means killer or murderer more particularly.
But then you have, so that's the noun, but for the verb, you have naka, which is strike or smite.
And this can result in death or injury.
So within this category, it leaves a little bit, it leaves more leeway to say, you know, struck, not intentionally with murder.
And so specifically, that's the phrase used in Joshua 20.
So if that's too much information for you, which is a lot of information, we can move on.
But I just the point of all that is to say that there's a lot of nuance around the legal code within the Old Testament.
And even as we think about it today, like I've thought a lot about, well, is in what cases and in what instances may I might I use a weapon?
And if you put yourself in that in that category, you have a lot of interesting conversations.
We've had conversations with friends that say, in no case whatsoever, should you ever use a weapon on somebody else, even in a case of self-defense.
And then you say, well, what if they're coming after your wife and kids and then they start to think about it a little bit more.
But I think it's really interesting.
I think the Old Testament gives us so many pictures of war and it can be so brutal and very explicit.
And even it's just almost like sometimes are rated right with the stories it gives us.
But I think it's good just to wrestle with these different categories.
It's good to think about what does it actually mean?
What does war actually mean? Is war different today than it was in the Old Testament or not?
And there are a lot of different answers.
And the time and the prep, I'm just throwing these questions out.
I'm not going to answer them. So maybe we can have some discussion around this.
But really, I think it's clear that there are different categories.
If you want to go deeper in those categories, invite you to do a word study on murder and killing like I did.
And it's fairly simple if you just go to Blue Letter Bible and just look up the words and you can begin to read through them.
And I'm not going to draw like super definitive conclusions around each one just because I'm not a Hebrew scholar and I'm not a scholar in general.
But I think it's very interesting and would encourage everybody to do their own homework if this topic interests you.
So I find the legal code of the Old Testament very interesting.
Okay, so enough with that. If that's boring you, I apologize.
You know, you don't always get a... when you're in Joshua, they don't cross the Promised Land every chapter.
So sometimes you have to do with what you're dealt.
But I just wanted to run through just a couple of things and I find this very interesting.
But the way that the legal code is actually shaped by the Scripture.
And in the West we have this thing called British common law or English common law.
And American law is very connected to that because the people who came and wrote the laws,
they were coming from England and Scotland and that Anglo type of area,
which they built on a lot of the laws that were in the English or British common law.
And many of those laws were rooted in Scripture, not all of them.
It's not a complete copy paste, but a lot of the ideas are rooted in Scripture.
And I want to just go through a couple of examples of how the law is rooted in the Scripture.
And actually, has anybody ever heard of the evangelist Charles Finney?
Anybody ever heard of him?
He was one of the most powerful and effective evangelists of the 1800s.
And he was an attorney and he was not a born again believer at this time.
And he was reading all these legal briefs and he was studying the law.
And he began to see that all the laws were referencing Scripture.
And he started to think, huh, that's very interesting.
They're referencing different Bible verses, either in like the court cases,
the judges would reference it, or just in his legal textbooks,
they would reference the Bible.
So he began to read the Bible.
And he had a very dramatic conversion.
He was out in the woods and he was reading the Scripture.
And he said he felt warm liquid love pouring through his body.
And then he went on through time to be one of the most effective evangelists in America.
Just whole towns would come to know the Lord because of his effective preaching.
And he was actually the guy who started the altar call.
He used to have people come up to the front and sit on the nervous bench,
they would call it, or the anxious bench.
And then he would talk to them one by one and lead them to the Lord.
And then that's how the altar call developed because they'd say,
come up here, you know, if you want to learn more or you want to,
you know, if you're anxious about the state of your soul.
So anyway, all that to say is that Charles Finney came to the Lord.
Originally, he was an attorney and he's began to see how Scripture
connected to the legal code.
So here are, I think I've got a couple.
But number one would be murder versus accidental killing.
I think we can see that already.
But there are different types of codes that were developed in the law.
We have murder, manslaughter, justifiable homicide, excusable homicide.
And so these are all drawn from the different nuances within Scripture.
We have the requirements of witnesses.
Deuteronomy 19.15 says,
a matter shall be established by two or three witnesses.
So the English courts, they didn't always require a witness to convict.
But a lot of times you would need one for a jury to be able to convict.
Due process, we see that here in the Scripture that there's actually
a process for the manslaughter or manslaughter to actually go
and sit before a council of elders and have his case heard.
You couldn't just, you know, off him without having a process
or a trial or these kinds of things.
You need to hear both sides.
Another important note from Joshua 20 is that they're going to a city
that the people in the city don't know the man or woman.
And that speaks to impartiality and how they would take the facts
more into account rather than the man's character
or, you know, maybe he was, maybe he had some bad business dealings
and he upset the chief elder and then chief elder says,
now we got him, you know, this is payback.
And then the Torah repeatedly insists that justice should not favor
the rich or the poor.
Leviticus 19.15 and Deuteronomy 16.19.
And English jurists would emphasize this,
especially when they signed the Magna Carta in 1215,
that the king now had to be subject to the laws of God and the law.
This is a very important legislation.
And the scholars say that this signing in 1215 kicked off
the whole movement towards rights and kind of now how we have human rights
and everybody is equal under the law.
And that's why there's so many leads that we can trace.
And we can trace this to Scripture because the Old Testament kings
were also subject to God and God's laws.
And that's also why when you see the crown on the king from like,
you know, the video games or like the movies,
it's got a cross on top because the king had to be subject
underneath the cross of Christ.
Theoretically, we know what happens in practice.
Protection of property was in there.
You can see a lot of boundary markers.
Don't move your neighbor's boundary.
Restitution, false testimony, which false testimony.
I heard somebody say this once and really click with me.
If there could be any death penalty,
it should be for lying in court, which is perjury.
Because one of the biggest problems in a court is that
people are untruthful.
People don't tell the truth.
This is the thing that the Lord has on all of us.
And this is why the Lord constantly warns us against judging others
is because we don't have all the facts.
We don't know what everybody has been through,
why people are acting that way and why they're doing this and that.
Now, we do have some leeway to judge fellow believers
who we're in covenant community with.
But there's also procedures for that.
But the Lord really warns us.
Jesus says, hey, get the speck out of your eye
before you go for the log in somebody else's eye.
So there are a lot of precautionary tales to that.
But if we had the facts correct in court,
then we could more confidently convict people.
Does that make sense?
If we had a guarantee that all the facts were laid out there,
then the judge could make a good decision,
especially if he was a just judge.
For me personally, I don't have a problem with capital punishment
for rape and murder, like 100%.
But the problem is that are we always convicting the right person?
The answer to that is no.
So that's kind of where the rub comes.
But if we knew exactly what happened,
then we wouldn't have as much of an issue
giving the right judgment.
And the Bible in the Ten Commandments says,
you shall not bear false witness.
And so this was one of the core things that the Lord said,
is do not bear false witness,
do not give false testimony against your neighbor.
And we say, yeah, don't lie, but false testimony
or bearing false witness is way higher than lying.
It's basically, do not commit perjury
is basically what that's saying in the law of court.
You shouldn't lie either, but it's not just like,
oh, I told a white lie, I broke the Ten Commandments.
Maybe that probably relates to it.
We shouldn't do that.
But this is like, don't lie in court, which is perjury,
because if you give a false testimony,
somebody might get executed because of that.
So that's also in our legal proceedings.
Sanctity of life, no private vengeance.
We talked about kings under the law.
And we can say that the British common law,
which a lot of that came over to us,
trickled down to us here in the States,
was heavily influenced by the Hebrew scripture.
And we owe it, we owe a lot of our legal foundation
to the Old Testament, which some of you might be super obvious.
And you're saying, yeah, duh, you could have saved me,
you know, 15 minutes, not talking about that.
But I think for me, it's interesting just to dig in
and see like where some of these things actually come from.
So let's wrap this up.
This passage leaves us with a couple of loose ends,
and hopefully I can tie up a few of them here.
But the one thing that puzzled me
and kind of concerned me a little bit as I was reading this,
maybe concern isn't the right word,
but it was, yeah, like a splinter,
is that the avenger could go and kill the person.
And if the avenger was like really quick or had a fast horse,
like he could get there to the city before the guy and kill him.
And I was thinking like, what is up with that?
Now that's probably not,
I don't know what the chance of that would have been
in the ancient world.
Whereas like, you know, either traveling on foot
or like on a donkey or something,
how quickly could you get there?
You know, it's not like today where if I couldn't afford a plane ticket
I'd have to drive, but the guy could fly, you know, to Chicago
or whatever if that's where it was from here.
You know what I'm saying?
But I think where I kind of land on it,
and this might come up in discussion time too,
but we're never going to have perfect justice
on this side of the age to come.
And I think that's one thing that ought to give us hope
is that we will have perfect justice on the other side of the age to come.
When we all stand in front of God, he's going to judge us.
Roman says on that day he will judge the hearts and the secrets of men.
And we can all keep secrets.
We can all try to, you know, not show our full hand all the time
in small ways or in big ways, but on that day the Lord will reveal it all.
And like this guy, just think about the abuse of this, right?
Like the law gets abused all the time.
But think about how this law could be abused
if you actually killed somebody.
Let's say you rigged it so that, like, you're a blacksmith
and at that moment the guy walks in and you like put down your anvil
and it hits him, you know, that kind of thing, and you got him.
But you could claim, oh, it was unintentional.
I didn't have anything against that guy.
And maybe nobody knows like how he, how he, whatever,
cheated your son out of a business deal or something like that, right?
Who knows what it could have been.
And then now he's fleeing to the city of refuge where nobody knows him
and he might be able to get off.
And so there's that side too where it could go both ways.
There could be injustice on the one end
where the guy comes and kills the man for not getting to the city quick enough.
Or maybe the guy did actually kill him.
He did have hate in his heart for him
and he did intend to do that.
And I just think like that just brings up so many, so many questions.
And to me it just reflects so much of like the abuse even of our legal code today
of how like the FBI can know that the mafia is like operating in these ways
but they have to like catch him on tape, you know,
in order for it to work in a court of law because we do have due process.
Like we can't just, we're not supposed to just go in and, you know,
do a federally approved hit on 20 mafia guys,
although that would kind of be justice because if they know
that they're doing these kind of things and ordering these hits,
whatever, et cetera, et cetera.
But we're never going to have perfect justice on this side of heaven
and on this side of eternity.
And I think that gives, that's kind of sad but also gives us hope
that the Lord is just and he's going to judge and he's going to restore all things.
He's going to restore all debts and he already did.
Jesus died on the cross for all of our debts, for all of our sins,
for everything that we have done wrong and that God is going to judge us for.
And he's basically given us a blank check saying, hey, come to me
and I will basically forgive and cancel all of your debts, all of your sins.
Just walk with me, walking covenant, faithfulness with me.
I'll give you the Holy Spirit.
Here's the down payment.
You get eternal life now and in the age to come,
you get a new body and you get to live with me
and walk it out on the new heavens and the new earth.
And I think that's the tension here.
We even see like in Israel how they had the laws of God,
but even with God's laws, they were falling short of the glory.
And even with the system set up given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai,
it still wasn't enough.
And the Lord had to send Christ in order to fully complete his plan.
And in the end, he will fully restore everything.
And in the end, he will reign with righteousness and justice.
And all these little things are going to get worked out.
If anybody never heard of Alan Dershowitz, I think he defended OJ, right?
Maybe, maybe not, that my dad would probably know.
But he said the legal system is not supposed to be,
the American legal system is not supposed to be right all the time.
It's supposed to be right on the balance.
Like if it's right 80, 90% of the time, that's good enough.
And he's one of the top legal minds in America or has been.
He's a professor of law or was a professor of law at Harvard University.
And this is the way legal scholars think about the law.
And they do this, and they think this way because of so many things,
because people lie in court, people have different motives, da-da-da-da.
You can't get every case right.
There's human error involved and there's human sin nature involved.
But when we stand before God, it is not going to be correct on the balance.
It's going to be correct 100%.
And if you're in Christ, that's an amazing thing
because he's going to judge us as righteous because we are positionally
and we have been made holy and righteous before him.
We've been justified by faith and he's going to right all the wrongs.
And I'm not exactly sure how he's going to do it,
but he's going to restore all things.
All the records of debt are going to be canceled
and the wicked are going to receive a punishment as well.
And the wicked will receive a punishment in according to their works,
is what the Bible says.
And they will have wrath and shame on them.
And the righteous will receive eternal life and honor and glory
and all these things that we have to look forward to.
So, yeah, this is an interesting section of scripture.
And I think in my mind, it piqued some interesting questions.
And I hope that it piques interesting questions in your mind.
If this is your first time here, it's not going to be like this each time.
Right?
I'm just kind of kidding because I think at some points it was maybe a little bit dry.
But really, the Lord is speaking to us even through these more dry sections
of the scripture.
And I hope that it piques your interest to go and study the Old Testament
and to ask the Lord what was his intention behind all these things
and then to go and study and get answers from either other verses in the scripture
or even study the historical context to begin to understand what that ancient world was really like.
So, we got some questions that we're going to go over.
And so, let me just pray, but then we'll break up into groups.
And I have printed out a bunch of questions for us.
So, if you have some time, you can hang around.
But let's just pray and ask the Lord just to bless the rest of our time.
So, Lord, we thank you for this scripture.
Lord, we thank you that you are speaking to us through Joshua 20.
And Lord, we pray that you would just teach us about who you are, Lord.
Teach us about your ways.
Teach us about how just you are.
Lord, we thank you that you're just.
And we thank you that your justice will be revealed in full at the end of the age, Lord.
And we look forward to that day when you will put all things right.
You will settle all the accounts, Lord.
And you will reward the righteous with resurrection and eternal life and new bodies, Lord.
And you will punish the wicked, Lord.
And we thank you that you are good, Lord.
And we pray that you would just bless this discussion time.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Thanks for joining us at Lansdale Life Church as we praise God and discuss His Word.
Don't forget to join us for Worship Lives Sunday mornings at 10 a.m. Eastern on YouTube.
Be blessed and have a great day!