Turn now in your Bibles to the book of Joshua, chapter 20. You can find this in the Pew Bible on page 268. Now, for those of you who've gone to Europe and then Africa and come back to find that we're still in the book of Joshua, And not even at the very end of Joshua you might be wondering, what's been going on? Well, you've been gone. But there have been some disruptions in our schedule, and we haven't been able to stay on Joshua right straight through. But we are back on track, and our plan is to finish this up in the next several weeks. We've come to the part of the book that's sort of in the middle where they've already conquered the land, and then the land's being distributed amongst the tribes. And the last part of the distribution is for the tribe that doesn't receive any land. They just received some cities and there are some special aspects to these cities. And so we're going to take in this week and then in next week, the Levites and their inheritance and these particular cities that they get and what this might say to us as God's people today. So we will read now from Joshua, chapter 20, and I'll read the whole chapter. This is the word of the Lord. The Lord also spoke to Joshua, saying, Speak to the children of Israel, saying, appoint for yourselves cities of refuge of which I spoke to you through Moses, that the slayer who kills a person accidentally or unintentionally may flee there and they shall be your refuge from the avenger of blood. And when he flees to one of those cities and stands at the entrance of the gate of the city and declares his case in the hearing of the elders of that city, they shall take him into the city as one of them and give him a place that he may dwell among them. Then the Avenger of Blood, if the Avenger of Blood pursues him, they shall not deliver the slayer into his hand because he struck his neighbor unintentionally, but did not hate him beforehand. And he shall dwell in that city until he stands before the congregation for judgment and until the death of the one who is the high priest in those days. Then the slayer may return and come to his own city and his own house to the city from which he fled. So they appointed Kadesh and Galilee in the mountains of Naphtali, Shechem in the mountains of Ephraim and Kirjath Arba, which is Hebron in the mountains of Judah. And on the other side of the Jordan, by Jericho, eastward, they assigned Bezer in the wilderness on the plain from the tribe of Reuben, Ramath in Gilead from the tribe of Gad, and Golan in Bashan from the tribe of Manasseh. These were the cities appointed for all the children of Israel and for the stranger who dwelt among them. that whoever killed a person accidentally might flee there and not die by the hand of the avenger of blood until he stood before the congregation. And there will end the reading of God's word. May God bless his word to us. Well, if you're new to Bloomington, welcome. There are a few of you who are new to Bloomington. If you are returning to Bloomington after being gone sometime, welcome back. If you never went anywhere at all, still good to see you here this morning. Bloomington prides itself on being a safe and civil city. Have you heard that? You go on the city's webpage. We have a whole program devoted to making Bloomington a safe and civil city. The program, and I quote, works to ensure that Bloomington is a welcoming, valuing, and respecting community for all visitors and residents. Sounds great. I'd take that with a little bit of a grain of salt. Because as hard as we try to make our community a safe and civil community, If you read the newspaper, you see that there are crimes being committed at a regular clip. And yes, sadly, there are situations where there is a less than civil interaction between people. The visit of Douglas Wilson to our campus last spring sort of comes to mind. So we understand, we haven't quite made it to safe and civil in any sort of objective way. But we can agree that that's a worthy goal. In fact, all of us want to have a place that's a safe, secure place. And so as some of you are moving into new dorm rooms or apartments, if you're moving because of the school year or what have you, you want a place that's safe, that's secure, that's your place, a place you can go and relax and you know that that's, your place of refuge. And that's quite normal. We want our homes to be that way. We want our kids' schools to be that way. We'd like to see that in our neighborhoods. And certainly we'd like to see that in our churches. It's good to try to create safe, secure places. But we have to recognize that there is no such place in this world. There is no absolutely secure, safe place in this world. There was a movie a number of years back about this community of people, these families that got together and their desire to create a safe place for them. They moved out into the boondocks, out in the middle of the wilderness somewhere. They put a big fence around themselves. They didn't let anybody come in or go out. Totally self-sufficient. And the point of the story was, which was revealed when one of their members was killed. You can't keep evil out. Because where is the evil? It's in here, right? I mean, you can't keep it out. And we can't keep it out of our world. I watched on TV last week one of the women Saying, you know, we had this wonderful, idyllic community in the mountains in Washington State. And I look out and here's this fire just coming across like it's on wheels, just riding through everything. My house, everything. I was happy to get out with my life. Lost everything. That's sort of a graphic illustration of really what's true for all of us all the time. That we really don't have absolute security any place in this world outside of a relationship with Jesus Christ. And I think that comes across really powerfully in this passage. So as we look at this passage, that's what we're going to see. That Jesus Christ is the only true place of refuge for sinners. And because that's the case, we must flee to Jesus Christ as our place of rest and security and safety. And children, if you want to draw a picture this morning, you might draw a picture of this as something to do with this whole scene, the city where the and the man or woman running to the city for safety. And what happens in this city, the city of refuge? The first thing I'd like us to notice, and there is a bullet, an outline in your bulletin, if you'd like to follow along, is that God is concerned with justice. God is concerned with justice. This passage in Joshua is one of the shorter passages that deals with the cities of refuge. And the reason that's the case, I think, is because Joshua assumes you already know what's been said about the cities of refuge in the book of Numbers, chapter 35. And in the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 19, there's a lot more said. And so when we get to Joshua here, the assumption is, well, you already know quite a bit about the cities of refuge. So this treatment of it is fairly short. And you can see in the first verses that we read, the Lord also spoke to Joshua, saying, speak to the children of Israel, saying, appoint for yourselves cities of refuge of which I spoke to you through Moses. So this has all been laid out. to Moses and Joshua is now following through and doing what God told Moses to do. Now they're in the land, though, so now they can actually put this into practice. They have these cities and there are many things that we could say about these cities. There could be a whole series of sermons. We could have a sermon about the sanctity of human life. And what God's opinion of is of the murder of innocent life, that could be a sermon out of this. We could have a whole sermon about the appropriateness of capital punishment. That could be a sermon that we had if we looked at this. We could have a sermon about the seriousness of murder in all of its forms. That could be a sermon, but that's not going to be our sermon this morning. And if you want to hear a sermon that deals with those topics a little bit more, I preached on numbers 35 a number of years ago. And you can go on sermon audio and listen to that sermon. This is not that sermon. This is a sermon where I want to focus on what what this teaches us about God. And what it teaches us about ourselves as people who need a place of refuge. And the first thing I want us to notice here is that God is concerned about justice. That's the whole reason we have these cities of refuge. This whole system is because God cares about justice. We sang in Psalm 33 earlier in the service that the word of the Lord is right and all his work is done in truth. He loves righteousness and justice. The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord. He loves justice. And what's happening here, as we see in verse 3, is that God is making provision when somebody kills another person accidentally or unintentionally. It says in verse 3. Now, what's in view here is the fact that if you intentionally killed somebody, there were very clear provisions in the law as to what should happen to you. If you were guilty of murder, you violated the sixth commandment, That's a murder. And the penalty for that was execution. It was death. I gave you in the in the bulletin a cross reference here from numbers thirty five versus thirty and thirty one. And here God says whoever kills a person, the murderer shall be put to death on the testimony of witnesses. But one witness is not sufficient testimony against the person for the death penalty. Moreover, you shall take no ransom for the life of a murderer who is guilty of death, but he shall surely be put to death. And what this is telling us is in God's economy, justice for murder requires execution. It requires execution. In fact, if you look at the passage in Numbers 35, you'll see that it talks about what happens if we fail. If they fail to execute the death penalty, and if they fail, they're judged by God for that. So this is what the Lord says about justice. And this is helps us understand this whole person, the avenger of blood. You scratch your head when you read about who is this avenger of blood? We are prone to think, if God wants capital punishment, that this is just about vengeance. Just about getting someone back. And that's not what's happening at all. In fact, it's a little unfortunate that our English translations call this person the avenger of blood. Because the Hebrew word is actually the same word that is translated redeemer. In, say, the Book of Ruth, for example, where Boaz is the kinsman redeemer, and literally this person is the kinsman redeemer of blood. And it helps us understand that this isn't just about justice. It isn't I'm sorry about vengeance, about just settling scores. It's about fulfilling God's justice. And so this person, this avenger, as our text says, would be the closest male relative to the person that's died. And if a person is killed, it was the responsibility of this relative to seek justice for the murdered person. And that would require going and finding the criminal, making sure that the murderer was tried properly, and then even executing the sentence. That was all part of the responsibility. They didn't have a district attorney and they didn't have people that they hired to do these things. And part of what was going on is it was the responsibility of the people to make sure that God's justice was fulfilled. One of the reasons this kind of thing is so abhorrent, so challenging to people in our society today, is because when we think of the legal system, we don't think of God's justice. We talk about a person paying his debt to society. We talk about rehabilitating a criminal. But we rarely talk about God's justice, that God says what the appropriate punishment is when we take the life of another person. Now, because killing a person, another person, a human being made in the image of God was such a serious sin, the death penalty was required. But notice in that cross reference that I gave you from numbers 35, the standards of proof are very high because God's justice isn't just that murderers need to be punished properly. God's justice is that innocent people are not to be executed. So you had to have two eyewitnesses. Did you see that in Numbers 35 on the testimony of two witnesses? The burden of proof was very high, again, because God is concerned about justice. And actually, this whole system of the city of refuge is tied to that, because God is also acknowledging that if you kill someone accidentally, whether it's through negligence or just pure bad circumstances, That is not the same thing as premeditated murder. God's law recognizes that, and so God, in his desire to have justice, has provisions in his law both for punishing sin, but also for protecting people who may be accused of sin. So God is concerned about justice. That is our starting point. Second point, God's justice requires punishment even for accidental sins. It's interesting in our in our passage, the word that the King James translates slayer, if you've got the English standard version, it calls us the manslayer. This is where our legal code gets the concept of manslaughter, right? It's not intentional murder. The actual word is the same word, though, in Hebrew as the word for murder. There's no difference. The only difference we get is the context here that it says it's accidental or it's unintentional murder. And you notice here that even the person who's guilty of an accidental killing of another person has guilt to bear. Did you catch that? So let's say you're out in the woods and you're chopping wood with your friend and the axe handle slips, the axe head slips off the handle and strikes your friend in the head and he's killed. It's an accident. You weren't trying to kill him. This still says you have to flee to this city, one of these cities, and you must stay in that city as long as the high priest is alive. That is a penalty. You're banished from your family and from your home, even though it's an accident, there is a price to pay. Now, the price isn't capital, it isn't execution, but it is banishment. You're stuck in this foreign city. You know how many years Queen Elizabeth has been on the throne? This is the Diamond Jubilee, people. That's 70 years. Now, I don't know that the high priest always lived that long, but it could happen. You could be stuck in one of these cities for a long time until the high priest died. And so there was a punishment even for an accident. Jewish tradition is that if a person actually died before the high priest died, they were buried in the city of refuge and their bones were only moved after the high priest died. They took this very seriously. You couldn't move even the person's body back home until the high priest had died. John Calvin says in his commentary about this, the people were accustomed to detest murder, since homicide, even when not culpable, was followed by exile from country and home till the death of the high priest. For that temporary exile clearly showed how precious human blood is in the sight of God. That's well said. It's serious business. And even when it's an accident, It carries consequences. Now, it's not just in in murder situations and in situations of an accidental death. This is the case. In fact, there's a lot in the Old Testament legal system that talks about unintentional sins. I gave you one quotation from Numbers 15, verses 27 and 28. If a person sins unintentionally, he shall bring a female goat in its first year as a sin offering. So the priest shall make atonement for the person who sins unintentionally when he sends unintentionally before the Lord to make atonement for him and it shall be forgiven him. If you look at the book of Leviticus and the book of Leviticus says there are unintentional sins for which there is forgiveness and then there are what are called heavy handed. Sins. For which there is no remedy. And so it's not just in these kind of great cases of murder. This is the way the law was constructed, that even when you sinned because you forgot or you didn't know or it was an accident or you didn't mean to do it, it's still a sin. And as you see here, it still required sacrifice to deal with it. I think what this does is help us realize how serious sin is before a holy and righteous God. I don't know about you, but for me, If I go and say, I had an opportunity to help somebody or to stop and see if someone needed help, and I just go right by. I don't even think about it. And then later, I think to myself, what was wrong with me? Why didn't I notice that opportunity? Why didn't I take advantage of the chance to hurt somebody? I'm not that hard, or help somebody, sorry. In that case, I shouldn't stop, right? But I'm not so hard on myself. When I think, well, I just didn't think of I didn't think of that at the time. It's too bad I didn't think about that could have done something nice here. I just didn't think of it. You know, I'll try to think more, but I'm not that hard on myself. Now, if if it comes to my mind, I should you know, the Lord reveals it to me. You should help somebody. And then I consciously say, no, I don't want to do that. Well, then I feel a little more guilty about that. And that may be the case for you. You feel like, well, if it's an accident, it really is not that big a deal. And it's probably better. It is better if it's an accident. But God's law says it's still not OK. It's still not OK just because you didn't think about the right thing to do, because you're supposed to think of the right thing to do. That even the sins that we commit in ignorance, our sins that God holds us accountable for. And I think that's very, very sobering. Because what it means, and this is our third point, is that before God, you and I are guilty. We're guilty before a holy God. I'd love to stand up here and tell you, you know, the only sins I commit are the unintentional, accidental ones. But if I told you that, you'd know I was lying. And all too often, I have known exactly what I should or shouldn't do. And I violated God's standards anyway. And we recognize when we look at the Bible, our situation is even worse than we might first think it is. Jesus said, If you're angry with your brother without cause, you've essentially violated the sixth commandment. You don't even have to go ahead and kill them. If you're angry without cause, John writes in 1 John 3.15, whoever hates his brother is a murderer. Same idea, that anger and hatred are forms of violating the sixth commandment. I gave you in your outline the larger catechism question 136 and just a portion of it. Difficult to read it all, but some of the things forbidden by that sixth commandment, the commandment that forbids murder. Listen to these things and consider whether you've ever experienced them or committed them. Sinful anger, hatred, envy, desire of revenge. All excessive passions, distracting cares, immoderate use of meat, drink, labor and recreations, provoking words, oppression, quarreling, striking, wounding and whatsoever else tends to the destruction of the life of any. Envy tends to the destruction of the life of your neighbor. You might have been puzzled when we read that because But they have in view here things that are tending to the destruction of your own life, aren't they? And so when they mention their excessive passions, distracting cares, immoderate use of meat, drink, labor and recreations, that's talking about how you don't value your own life. Because you work too much. Or you eat too much. Or you drink too much. Or you're too easily excitable. You watch the game on TV and you're throwing things at the TV and you're yelling at the top of your lungs. That's not me. But some people have that problem. I think that would be excessive passions. tending toward the destruction of our own life. And if we understand this commandment in all of its implications, we recognize we're all guilty before a holy God. We've not kept the sixth commandment intentionally or unintentionally. We've done things that tended to our own death and to the death of others in one way or another. And so, as the Bible tells us, we're all under a death sentence as sinners against God. We are guilty people. A couple of years ago, Butch Shoup, an elder over in Columbus, invited us to come over. He's got a little shooting range on his land. He lives out in the country. And so we went out to shoot a little on his range. And Butch gives a safety talk before you shoot. And his safety talk is pretty personal. Because his own father was killed in a hunting accident. And the person who pulled the trigger was Butch's brother. You know, they've all told Butch's brother, we know it was an accident. It was an accident. He didn't mean to kill Dad. He said to this day, His brother's life is a wreck because of the guilt that he carries with him. And in our society, people have all kinds of great strategies for how you can get rid of the guilt that you feel as a person who has violated God's Word. You can work it off. You can drink it off. You can drug it off. You can do good things. You can join groups. On and on. Those things don't work. They never work. There's only one way to get rid of guilt. And that's through the Lord Jesus Christ. Apart from Him, there is no remedy. Because before a holy God, we are all guilty. But fourthly, I want us to see here that God has provided a place of refuge for guilty sinners. This passage focuses on the grace of God because this is dealing with a person who is guilty, a person who has killed a friend. Matthew Henry, in his commentary, says, God forbid that we would kill one of our friends. And praise God if we haven't. Killed one of our friends through our own negligence. You realize you drive through this city. Going unreasonably fast. Or texting on your phone. And if someone's child stepped out onto the road. And you killed someone. You might not have to go to jail for it. But you would be struggling to deal with that for the rest of your life. I thank God that none of us have actually. Been in that situation, but that could happen, that could happen. And that's what this law is about, people who've done something like that. And what are you going to do now? You accidentally killed your friend. Well, verse 4 says you run. You run to the city because the near relative of this friend is coming after you. He's coming to get you. And you know that if he finds you, he has the legal right to execute you. And so you flee with all you can to one of these six cities. And if you come to the city, as verse four says, you stand at the entrance of the gate and you declare your situation. You say, help me, I need refuge. And there's a preliminary hearing and they listen to your situation. And then it says in verse four, they bring you into the city. I think those verses are very, those words are very significant. That they take you into the city as one of them and give you a place that you may dwell among them. And then verse five says, if the avenger of blood pursues, then they'll protect. the guilty person from the Avenger and won't turn you over to the Avenger until verse six says there is a full trial. He dwells in the city until he stands before the congregation for judgment. There's a full trial. Now, if the person is found guilty and it's determined it was intentional murder, he's executed. There's no sanctuary here for murderers. But if there's a trial and it's determined it was an accident, then he's a citizen of that city of refuge and he stays there in exile. as long as he has to until the high priest dies. But you can understand what an incredible blessing this provision is that God is saying, come into the city and be spared execution. So we need to notice a couple of things about these cities. First of all, these cities are accessible. God wants people to be able to find the cities. We won't do it now, but later, go look in your Bible map. Where these cities are, remember, we've talked about the promised land. The tribes are on the west and the east side of the Jordan River, and there's three cities on each side and they're spaced throughout. They're sort of central to the two sides and their north, south and sort of central. They're geographically dispersed so that they can be accessed. And there are also cities that are inhabited and run by the Levites. Which means there are places where they will receive impartial judgment. You realize these refugees may be running. It may be you're a member of one tribe and you accidentally kill a member of another tribe. That could be possible. And you could see how this could lead to sort of a Hatfields and McCoys thing starting to go on. But you go to one of these cities and the Levites are there. The Levites don't have any dog in the fight and they are God's ministers to give you true and accurate justice. And in addition, you see how these cities are open and welcoming. What kind of a city has its doors open to refugees, all of whom have killed somebody? A fascinating place to live, to be prepared to bring in people into your community. And we see also down in verse nine of our text that these cities were open not just to the Israelites, but the strangers who dwelt among them, the aliens as well. They're open to everybody. So these cities are accessible. They're impartial. They're prepared to receive the refugees and they're open to all. I think that's a wonderful picture of the church of Jesus Christ. That the church is a place for refugees. It's not a place for people who are self-righteous or for people who get their lives all back together and then come. It's a place for refugees. We live in a community that in one sense is full of refugees. Now, I don't think they'd say it that way. But we not only have people from all over the world, but we have people still in their guilt, not reconciled to a holy God. And if our church is anything in this community, it should be a place that's open and welcoming for refugees, for people who come Not because they have it all together, but because they need asylum and they understand that this is a place where guilty sinners can find refuge. But then fifthly, we want to see that it is the blood of Jesus that redeems you and gives you a true place of rest. The church is supposed to be a place of refuge for sinners. And sadly, the church is not always that kind of a place, because sometimes in the church there are factions and backbiting and divisions and all kinds of things. And by God's grace, we've been spared a great measure of that here. But that's not uncommon in the church. And just by coming to the church, you can't actually find freedom from guilt and forgiveness of sins. But there's something in this text that points us to where we do find freedom from guilt. And let's look again at verse 6. He shall dwell in the city until he stands before the congregation for judgment and until the death of the one who is high priest in those days. You understand that the person in the city of refuge is, in a sense, living under the blood of the high priest. That's what is keeping the person safe, ultimately. Numbers chapter 35, verse 32. You shall take no ransom for him who has fled to his city of refuge, that he may return to dwell on the land before the death. of the high priest. You could not leave. You were in that city until the high priest died. And it was the blood of the high priest as he died which ultimately atoned for your sin, your negligent homicide. That's what released you. That's what finally satisfied the avenger of blood. The blood of the high priest. What a wonderful picture. of our Savior, Jesus Christ. That we're safe not because we're in the church, but because we're under the blood of our high priest, the one the Bible calls our great high priest. Only, our high priest, he didn't live out until he was 85 or however old and go to his death in the ripe old age He came and he willingly went to his death and he sought out his death and he was tracked down and captured and executed. Just like a guilty person would have been in this situation, he allowed himself to be captured and executed for us, for sinners, so that we could be free. from our guilt as he would pay the price. And notice that Jesus Christ didn't just die to save people who had committed accidental sins. Praise God. He died to save sinners. Period. And that means any sin that you have committed, whatever it is, can be forgiven in Jesus Christ. Any sin can be forgiven in Jesus Christ. This is because, as the Bible tells us, the blood of Jesus is precious. And it is His blood that redeems us. And it's His blood that He has shed for us that allows Him to say to people who are burdened, come to Me and I will give you rest. I will be your place of refuge. I will give you rest because I will remove the guilt that you cannot get rid of. The real guilt that you have before God. And this text also reminds us that there is no other place of refuge apart from Jesus Christ. If you go back to the book of Numbers and look again, you'll find out what would happen to a person who fled to the city, was given entrance to the city, was sheltered in the city, but who decided, you know what? I'm tired of living in this city. I'm going home. I'm going to visit my relatives. If the avenger of blood caught that person outside the city, that person was fair game. There was no safety outside the city. And the Avenger was there to hunt you down until the High Priest died and the High Priest's blood paid for the sin. And this is a stark reminder to us. We might like to think that we can go somewhere else and find our place of security, our place of safety. And there are a lot of things in our culture that would like to present themselves as places of security and safety, but the Bible tells us there is only one place. And that one place is Jesus Christ in a relationship with Him. So if you're here this morning and you have not put your faith in Jesus Christ, you have not recognized you are a sinner guilty before God who needs Christ, then this is the message for you. You need to see yourself as a person, guilty person, on the run with the avenger of blood on your heels. He's coming after you. And he will get you. And you're fleeing to the city. There's only one place. That's where you get into the city where the blood of the high priest will cover you. And you have to flee to the Lord Jesus Christ. and come to him, Jesus, take me as yours. I want refuge. But if you've come to Christ and you're a believer, then you need to be thinking, I need to be living in the city where those who are saved by the blood live. That is the church. And if you've come and fled to Jesus for salvation, you need to be found where the redeemed sinners are in the city, in the church of Jesus Christ. And so for some of you, you said, yes, I know the Lord Jesus, but you don't yet have a relationship with His people in the church. And that needs to be what you're thinking about. How to be a part of the church serving the Lord Jesus. And I think for those of us who are in the church, What we need to think about is the same thing the people who lived in these cities used to think about. And according to the Jews, every spring they went out and they painted the signs. They put signs along the roads. Look in Deuteronomy 19. They were required to have roads that led to these six cities. So they went out and they cleaned off the roads and they fixed the bridges and they made sure the paths were clear. And then they put signs up that said, refuge, so that a person who was literally running could read the sign and see an arrow pointing. You're close. You're almost there. Keep going. This is the place where we will take you in and receive you as one of us. And you will dwell here under the blood of the high priest. That should be our attitude in the church. We're surrounded by people guilty, lost in their sins. Many of them don't know it. We recognize that. But some do, and God is working in people's lives. And we need to be saying, here is a place of refuge. Let us straighten the rows. Let us paint the signs. Let us say, there is a place where you will be welcomed in. where you will hear about the King. Where we will love and minister to you. Where you will be protected, cared for, and encouraged in your faith and your service to the Lord. And where you will hear Jesus say, the one who comes to me, I will by no means cast out. Jesus is the only true place of refuge for sinners. Come to Him. Come to Him and find rest. And let us make His church a place of rest for people seeking refuge in the one true God through the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.