Okay, so we're going to pick up in Joshua chapter 13, and as I said, we're going to try and make our way through several sections of this second half of the book. I'd like to get as far as a section in chapter 20, Lord willing. And if we make it that far, then we'll have two weeks remaining in our study of the book of Joshua, and then after that we'll move into Judges. The second half of the book of Joshua is a record of the settlement of the land. And it is difficult reading. Not difficult because it's technical, but difficult because it's a bit tedious. And I want to just kind of address that here at the outset. If this were the second time that we were going through the book of Joshua together, we've got some chairs up here. Nobody wants this fine real estate right here up front. The second half of Joshua can be a little bit tedious, but if this were the second time that we were going through the book, we would actually be studying all of this material. One of the things that I like to do with Bible classes that was done for me even when I was a child in studying the Old Testament is giving you blank maps and having you draw off all of the tribal allotments. very familiar with the geography, be able to identify all of the major waterways and to know where each tribe was settled. It was my judgment at this stage of our church's life that maybe that's not the best use of our time right now. I want to give you a bird's eye view, see the forest, don't get lost in the trees. And so that means that in the second half of the book, I'm not going to be teaching every section. I'm going to broadly survey and say, okay, over the next A couple of chapters, you've got tribes receiving their allotments and then just move on to the next narrative section. That's what we did in much of the Pentateuch. That's what we're going to do in Joshua as well. So that being said, I want to encourage you to recognize that there is value in this material, even though we are not giving full attention and diligence to studying it this time through. This is precious as a history of our fathers. Now, you may be saying, I'm not a Jew, I'm a Gentile, it's not my family, it's not my father's, but it is. In 1 Corinthians chapter 10, Paul addresses a Gentile church and he says, all our fathers passed through the sea. The church's fathers is Israel, right? They are the patriarchs. They are Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, his brothers, or his 12 sons rather, and all of the tribes that come from them. These are our fathers. And as such, this is part of our heritage. And even though it may not seem to have a great deal of relevance to us immediately in our own lives, it has tremendous relevance in terms of showing to us God's power, God's faithfulness, the fulfillment of God's promises. All of that is witnessed to in the book of Joshua. So I want to encourage you, this is one of those sections that when you hit it in your Bible reading, you're going to have a tendency to slow down, get discouraged, kind of fall off schedule, skim, scan, whatever. I recognize that we do that sometimes. I just want to encourage you that like with the genealogies, don't do that all the time. This is here for a reason, and the Bible is given to us by inspiration, and it is profitable. All Scripture, Paul says, is profitable for the people of God. Now that being said, we're going to start in chapter 13 and look at verses 1-7 this evening. Joshua chapter 13, beginning at verse 1. Now Joshua was old and advanced in years, and Yahweh said to him, You are old and advanced in years, and there remains yet very much land to possess. This is the land that yet remains. All the regions of the Philistines and all those of the Geshurites from Shihur, which is east of Egypt, northwards of the boundary of Ekron, it is counted as Canaanite. There are five rulers of the Philistines, those of Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gath, and Ekron. and those of the Avim in the south, all the land of the Canaanites, and Merah that belongs to the Sidonians, to Aphek, to the boundary of the Amorites, and the land of the Gebelites, and all Lebanon toward the sunrise, from Baal-Gad below Mount Herban, to Lebo-Hamath, all the inhabitants of the hill country, from Lebanon to Misraphoth-Mayim, even all the Sidonians, I myself," this is the Lord speaking, I myself will drive them out from before the people of Israel. Only allot the land to Israel for an inheritance as I have commanded you. Now therefore divide this land for an inheritance to the nine tribes and half the tribe of Manasseh." You'll remember that two of the tribes plus half of the tribe of Manasseh had already received their tribal allotments on the east side of the Jordan River. Now, one of the things about this section that immediately jumps off the page is that there's still a lot of work to be done. Here we are at the end of the conquest, and the great general of Israel, Joshua, is old and advanced in years. And don't you love the way that the Bible begins saying, now, Joshua was old and advanced in years. And the first thing that God says to Joshua is, Joshua, you are old and advanced in years. Wouldn't you love to receive divine revelation like that, right? And so immediately you think, well, with all of this work yet to be done, how is this work going to be done? Joshua is in decline, right? He's aging. His time leading the people is about done at this stage, and yet there's still so much to be done. Two things that you need to see. Number one, God was going to give this land to the children of Israel successively in stages. He says this in Deuteronomy. He says, I'm not going to give you all of it at once, because if I did, you could not possess it all, and the wild beasts and the wild vines would run over and take over. So this is part of the plan, is that the invasion was not the end of this process. There was still to be a division and then a settlement of the land. And this is going to continue on for a couple of generations. Secondly, God was not going to complete this great work by any single great leader. It was not going to be Moses who was going to give the land of Israel to the children of Israel. It was not going to be Joshua who fully and finally secured all of the borders. Yahweh would be the one who would do that great work. And this is an opportunity for the people to be tested in terms of their devotion to God. This is what we're going to see at the beginning of the book of Judges. And unfortunately, what we're going to see is that they largely fail this test. Right? They are not faithful. And we're even going to see some early indications of that in our section tonight. So, God is not going to simply give them a figure like Moses or Joshua to finish this work. He is calling them to walk by faith and to settle the land. Now, one of the other things that we need to notice in this section is that the boundaries of Israel's allotment are much larger than they almost ever possessed. Probably the only time that Israel controls the land that is described in this paragraph is during the reign of Solomon. Maybe the latter years of David and the early reign of Solomon. Beyond that, Israel does not experience the fullness of possession that is described here. Because what's described here stretches all the way from Syria, just south of the Euphrates River, all the way down to the eastern border of Egypt at the Wadi al-Arish, right? That's a huge swath of territory. They are to possess that land. They are to possess the land that the Philistines occupied. They are to completely secure this territory. And their failure to do so through much of their history is unfortunately a reminder of their failure of faith. If we go down just a little bit in this chapter, you'll see that God is allotting the inheritance. He starts on the east side of the Jordan, marking out that that has already been designated, and yet you'll notice in the second half of chapter 13 that it's Moses who gave that inheritance. It's recorded here because this portion of the book of Joshua is the deed, right? It's the title to the land. It's the title for each one of the tribes. So even though that inheritance has already been given to those tribes, it is reaffirmed and recorded here. But I want you to notice one little verse, verse 13, that is significant in foreshadowing several other features in the rest of the book and in the text that is yet to come in the book of Judges. In verse 13, Yet the people of Israel did not drive out the Geshurites or the Maekethites, but Geshur and Maeketh dwell in the midst of Israel to this day. Whoever is the scribe that is recording this final edition of the book, they say, yep, Gesher and Maekath are still there, right? Now this is probably in the early divided, or the early United Kingdom, rather. This is not very far past Joshua's lifetime. And yet, it will continue to be true for some time even to come. God promises in verse 6, I myself will drive them out. And I don't want to steal all of my thunder from the first two chapters of the book of Judges, but there are going to be three reasons that they are not all driven out. And this is one of the three reasons, and that is Israel fails in their responsibility. This is the first example in terms of the settlement of the land of the unbelief of the nation. Now, do you see the words unbelief in verse 13? You won't see the word, but you should see the concept. Go home and read Hebrews chapters 3 and 4. You'll see that unbelief and disobedience to God's instructions are considered hand in hand. How do you see unbelief? You see disobedience. When we disobey the Lord, guess what we are evidencing? Unbelief. This is why that prayer of the Father in Mark chapter 9 is so important. Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. You say, I'm not an unbeliever, I'm a believer. Really? How do you relate to God in His law? Are you a law keeper or a law breaker? Are you a covenant keeper or a covenant breaker? If you're honest, then you recognize that every one of us break the law all the time. We don't want to, we try not to, but we fall short of the glory of God every day in more ways than we know. And our disobedience, our failure to keep the law, is itself a manifestation of our unbelief. And it certainly is in this case. God has promised, He says, I will myself drive out those nations. How does Israel fail to do that? if they do not believe what God said, if they do not trust the promises of God. And this is what it comes down to. Our ladies class, we were talking a little bit about another application of this yesterday, when we mentioned the fact that fundamentally, We have to believe what God has said. I was counseling someone recently, the last couple of weeks, about assurance. And with our assurance, we say, I just can't believe that I am forgiven. Well, I can assure you that you're not worthy of being forgiven. You don't deserve to be forgiven. But what has God promised in His Word? If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Now, you either believe what God says or you don't. And it ultimately comes down to a matter of faith. Faith that is real, faith that is true, faith that is living, is evidenced by obedience, submission to His Word. And that includes trusting His promises, and it includes acting upon His commands. Does that make sense? Alright, now let's go a little bit further into chapter 14 now. I'm going to just skip ahead, and I hate to do this, but I'm going to do it anyway. I want to pick up the reading in chapter 14 in verse 6, and I have to say this is perhaps my favorite part of the book of Joshua. Maybe. It's certainly in the top 24 of the chapters in the book. Let's think about that for a second. Verse 6, Then the people of Judah came to Joshua at Gilgal, and Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite said to him, You know what Yahweh said to Moses the man of God in Kadesh Barnea concerning you and me. I was forty years old when Moses the servant of Yahweh sent me from Kadesh Barnea to spy out the land, and I brought him word again as it was in my heart. But my brothers who went up with me made the heart of the people melt, yet I wholly followed Yahweh my God. And Moses swore on that day, saying, Surely the land on which your foot has trodden shall be an inheritance for you and your children forever, because you have wholly followed Yahweh my God." And now, behold, Yahweh has kept me alive, just as He said, these 45 years since the time that Yahweh spoke this word to Moses while Israel walked in the wilderness. And now, behold, I am this day 85 years old. I am still as strong today as I was in the day that Moses sent me. My strength now is as my strength was then, for war and for going and coming. So now give me this hill country of which Yahweh spoke on that day, for you heard on that day how the Anakim were there with great fortified cities. It may be that Yahweh will be with me, and I shall drive them out, just as Yahweh said." Then Joshua blessed him, and he gave Hebron to Caleb, the son of Jethunah, for an inheritance. Therefore Hebron became the inheritance of Caleb, the son of Jethunah, the Kenizzite to this day, because he wholly followed Yahweh, the God of Israel. Now, the name of Hebron, formerly, was Kiriath Arba. Arba was the greatest man among the Anakim, and the land had rest from war. This is great. Do you realize what you just heard? This is an 85-year-old man who's been waiting 45 years for a particular fight, and he wants that fight. He says, the time has come. There's a lot here to unpack, but let's turn back for just a second, just a few pages back to Numbers chapter 13. I want to make sure that you appreciate the historical background here to be able to understand this conversation. Numbers chapter 13, the children of Israel have come out of the land of Egypt, they've spent a year at Mount Sinai, they've built the tabernacle, they've gone up to Kadesh Barnea on the southern edge of the border of Canaan, they've sent 12 spies into the land for 40 days, spying out the land. They come back, they say it's a magnificent land, but 10 of the spies say, we can't take it. Let's pick up the reading in verse 25. We came to the land to which you sent us. It flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. However, the people who dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large, and besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there. The Amalekites dwell in the land of the Negev, the Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites dwell in the hill country, and the Canaanites dwell by the sea along the Jordan." But Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it. Then the men who had gone up with him said, We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we are. So they brought to the people of Israel a bad report of the land that they had spied out, saying, the land through which we have gone to spy it out is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height. And there we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim. And we seem to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seem to them." The sons of Anak, the sons of Anak, which live in Hebron, which is the territory that Caleb asks Moses for and says, when we come back 40 years from now, I want that hill. Caleb has been waiting 45 years. It's 45 years from the conversation in Numbers chapter 13 to Joshua chapter 14. This is, by the way, how we date the general period of the conquest. We said that it's typically thought to be 6 or 7, maybe 6 1⁄2 to 7 1⁄2 years. You can do the math, right? From the time that they leave Kadesh Barnea and begin the wilderness wandering, it is 39 years from that time until they cross the Jordan to invade the land of Canaan. 39 years because they've already spent one year in the wilderness between the time of the Exodus and the time that the spies are sent in. And so now, 45 years later, a six or seven year campaign has been waged and Caleb says, it's my turn. I want the hill that Moses promised to give me." Three times in Numbers chapter 14, did you notice the phrase, Caleb wholly followed Yahweh? Not H-O-L-Y, but W-H-O-L-L-Y. He entirely followed Yahweh's will. Does that mean that Caleb was sinless? No. Does it mean that he keeps every part of the law in every respect? No, he's not Jesus. But within the specific context of this passage, he has entirely followed God's will. His faith is in contrast to the unbelief, not only of the ten spies, but of the entire nation. It is their unbelief that causes them to be exiled into the wilderness so that they will die there. And Caleb waits for them to die. And then he goes into the land and he waits for the conquest to be complete. And then he says, now it is time. 45 years ago, the Lord promised me, through His servant Moses, that I could have Hebron I wanted. Why does He want Hebron? Because that is where the sons of Anak are located. The sons of Anak do not populate the entire territory of Canaan. The sons of Anak was one particular clan, one specific people group, in a land that was populated by many different kinds of Canaanite tribes. But the sons of Anak were big. They were scary. The giants and the sons of Anak are one and the same. And there's this group of the sons of Anak living in Hebron. Caleb says, they are the reason that ten of the spies brought a bad report. They are the reason that they come back in Numbers chapter 13 and say, we were like grasshoppers. We felt like bugs. And Caleb says, I want to go and take them down. He wants to fight the giants. And that to me is remarkable. So let me give you a few points of application here. I want to be careful about this. We've tried to be... I'm sorry. Art, go ahead. What do you know about the Nephilim? The Nephilim go all the way back to questions dating from Genesis chapter 6 and then in the post-Diluvian period. In some way, shape, or form, these Nephilim are related to the giant race that Goliath and Anak and others are going to come from. There's a whole lot of thought, speculation among that you know well, right? Yeah. Yeah. Let me observe the Passover on that question, and we can talk about it later. Randy. Probably so. and ready to die, and Caleb says, hey, I'm like a 20-year-old. I'm ready to go fight. So what's the significance of that? Yeah. Yeah. So two possibilities. Some people read this text and think that Caleb is just being naively optimistic, right? That he's just still got a lot of fire in his belly, and he's ready to go. That wouldn't be inspired, though. Yeah, right. I tend to think that this is another episode like Moses. If you remember when Moses dies at 120, the Bible says that his eyesight had not dimmed and his strength had not faded. God preserves some people that way. And for whatever reason, I think that he preserves Caleb, perhaps because the Lord is the one who promised to give him Hebron, and he's going to preserve him until he gets it, you know? So, I would see that as the providence of God. But for whatever it's worth, I mean, the other argument would say, well, Caleb is just claiming this. It's not as though the narrator affirms it. So anyway. So I want to be careful about making applications of this because we try to read the Old Testament primarily Christologically. And so we're not just looking at Abraham, Moses, David, Caleb as role models for Christians. We're looking at them as types pointing us to Jesus Christ. And yet I do think that there is something about Caleb's example here that is noteworthy and that we would do well to pay attention to, and especially maybe our young men. This is one of the things we try to do at our house, is I want my girls to think of Ruth and Esther and Mary as role models in the family, right? And I want my boys to see Abraham and Moses and David and Joshua and Caleb as role models for them as well. And there are a few things that you learn about a man who trusts God like Caleb does, a man who wholly follows the Lord. What does it look like to wholly follow the Lord? One of the things that it looks like is he's willing to fight battles that other people are not willing to fight. When everybody else is saying, we can't do it, he's saying, God said we can do it. If God says we can do it, then we can. A person who wholly follows the Lord trusts God's word, and it doesn't matter if everyone else stands against him. It doesn't matter because he's going to be on the Lord's side. And even if that means defying his family, his friends, his peers, so be it. And that needs to be our spirit. That's part of what it means to follow the Lord entirely. That person is also always ready for a greater challenge. And this gets to Randy's point. If Joshua and Caleb are contemporaries, we would think that they're from basically the same generation. Joshua's ready to retire. That's not any indication of a lack of faith on his part. It's just that his work is done. But Caleb's isn't done yet. And at the time where a lot of people would be wanting to slow down, kick back, enjoy the benefits of retirement, Caleb is looking for another fight. Caleb is ready to go. I've said this before. I know I've got to say this carefully, living in Apache Junction, Arizona. But I'm really not sure that retirement is biblical. Really not sure of that at all. I think retiring from a career is completely biblical. In fact, I would love for you to do that sooner rather than later. If you have the liberty to do that, do that, right? But retirement, I'm not sure at all is a biblical category. The psalmist describes the righteous bearing fruit in old age. And if you have the freedom and the liberty to say, hey, I no longer have to work 40 or 60 or 80 hours a week to put food on the table, praise God, now I have that 40 or 60 or 80 hours to do things that are really meaningful, that are eternal, to invest in people, to invest in the work of the Lord. And many of you, by the way, in your retirement have done and are doing that, and I praise God for that. This church benefits tremendously from that. But it's something we've got to think about. It's to say that a person who wholly follows the Lord doesn't look at that as saying, I'm going to wholly follow the Lord while I have this responsibility. And once that's done, you know, I'm kind of done with that. I've scratched that off my to-do list. I move on to whatever I want to do. That's not the way this works. What I want to do is God's will. If I'm a child of God, that should be my attitude. My will is to do God's will. And that's going to look different at different stages of life. Let me tell you, when you're working in your career, or when you're raising small children, or when you're caring for an aging parent, that is God's will for your life. I have to tell this to my kids. I say, look, guys, your job right now is to get up and do your schoolwork. and to do it well, and to do it with an appropriate Christian attitude, right? That's your job. That won't always be your job. But whatever you are given to do on any given day or at any given season of your life, our job is to wholly follow the Lord. And we need to be prepared for greater challenges, right? Caleb is arguably facing his greatest challenge at the end of his life. Moses certainly did, right? God spends 80 years preparing him for the last third of his life, which is undoubtedly the hardest thing that he ever did. Third, a person who wholly follows the Lord may find that his ability to do certain things fades or is taken away. And yet his zeal like Caleb's is going to always endure. Now I've already said, I don't think that Caleb's physical strength is diminishing. I think he's another one like Moses that God providentially preserves. But recognize that for 45 years he can't do anything about this. You know, when the Lord tells the nation, go back into the wilderness, Caleb has to go with them. It was not Caleb's fault. Caleb was ready to go fight. Caleb would probably go to Hebron and storm the gates by himself. But that wasn't what he was supposed to do at that point. He's supposed to be with the nation. Right? He recognizes that he's part of a covenant community. And he can't just launch off on his own and do his own thing. Now this is hard. Sometimes you may find yourself in a situation where your ability to do what you believe needs to be done is taken away. And that should not change your zeal for God's will. Do not lose heart. The Lord tells the prophet Habakkuk about the judgment that is coming against Judah, and he says, though it tarries, wait for it. Those who wait upon the Lord, Isaiah says, the Lord shall renew their strength. They will mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. Right? But you sometimes have to wait for that. You may find, unlike Caleb, that your physical ability does decline. And you may say, I'm not able to do everything that I once could do, and I wish that I could do more than I'm able to do. That's okay. But the zeal for the Lord of hosts, that zeal should still be burning. Right? That fire should still be there, just like it was for Caleb. And then fourth, a person who wholly follows the Lord leads by example. Our men this morning, we were studying in 1 Peter chapter 5, we were looking at a passage actually that we're going to touch on next Lord's Day, not this coming Lord's Day, but the last lesson in this series on church leadership. And we talk about shepherd leadership and what it means for leaders to shepherd the flock and deacons to care for the congregation and members to serve one another. What does that look like? It doesn't look like telling other people what they ought to do, right? headship, leadership in the family and in the church looks like a shepherd walking in front of the flock, leading them by voice, leading them by example. Now granted, there are times where the shepherd has to pull the sheep's feet out from under him, put him up on the shoulders and say, no dummy, go this way, right? But the reality is that a lot of us associate leadership with power to command obedience. And that's not the way that it works in the home or in the church. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. It is not my job to make sure that my wife obeys the Lord's will. It's not my job. That's between her and the Holy Spirit. My job is to care for her, to sacrifice for her, to serve her, and to lead her and my children by example and by teaching, by voice. That's what leaders in Scripture do. Old Testament and New Testament. And so Caleb, he doesn't come out here telling everybody else what they ought to do. He says, no, no, let me have Hebron. This is what I want. And God promises it to him 45 years before. And now he's ready to claim that promise. People who wholly follow the Lord are concerned about the one person that they are able to control. And let's face it, you're not even really able to fully control that person either. Right? You cannot control your spouse, your children, your grandchildren, your brethren, The only person that you have influence over in any kind of an ultimate sense is yourself. You worry about your attitude, you worry about your actions. And you lead by example, right? And you let the Lord work on everybody else. Randy? I would think the meekness of wisdom is as our body starts to fail, our wisdom should increase. So it's not that our service stops, but it changes. That's right. That's an excellent point. That's exactly right. And I do think that that, you know, again, I told the men this morning about a great sermon title from years ago from another friend of mine, but he said, why don't more mature Christians act like it? Well, unfortunately, we don't always see that increase of wisdom and discernment as our bodies age. But that should be the way it is in the family of God, to recognize I may not be able to do some of the things that I was able to do in my physical strength. And yet, there are other ways in which I am contributing to the work of God and supporting the work of the Lord in this church and in this world, and that is by means of wisdom, that is by means of prayer, that is by means of counsel, that is older men discipling younger men, older women discipling younger women, right? And recognizing that the role that we play within the family will change over the years. We're not always going to be in the same spot, right? And that's okay. That's okay. I just want to be used up, right? I don't care how I'm used. I just want to be used up. Now, I want to point something out to you just very, very quickly. We're not going to spend any time on this, but if you go down to chapter 17 now, some commentators believe that there is a bracket here, and I want to at least point out the possibility. I can't say that I'm completely convinced, but I do think that it's plausible. At the end of chapter 17, you do seem to have in chapters 14, 15, 16, 17, this is the primary allotment of the main body of the land. And then there's some bits and pieces in chapter 18 and 19. But at the end of chapter 17, you have this interesting contrast between Caleb's courage on the one hand and the fearfulness and timidity of the tribe of Joseph on the other. Then the people of Joseph, I'm in verse 14 of chapter 17. Then the people of Joseph spoke to Joshua, saying, Why have you given me but one lot and one portion as an inheritance, although I am a numerous people, since all along Yahweh has blessed me? And Joshua said to them, If you are a numerous people, go up by yourselves to the forest, and there clear ground for yourselves in the land of the Perizzites and the Rephaim, since the hill country of Ephraim is too narrow for you. The people of Joseph said, The hill country is not enough for us. Yet all the Canaanites who dwell in the plain have chariots of iron, both those in Bethshean and its villages, and those in the valley of Jezreel. And Joshua said to the house of Joseph, to Ephraim and Manasseh, you are a numerous people and have great power. You shall not have one allotment only, but the hill country shall be yours. For though it is a forest, you shall clear it and possess it to its farthest borders. For you shall drive out the Canaanites, though they have chariots of iron and though they are strong. Except they didn't, as we'll see in Judges. It's interesting to me, you see this contrast. And again, whether this is intended to be a literary bracket, not as convinced of that. But I do think there's an interesting contrast between Caleb and the sons of Joseph here. Caleb is not talking about what other people ought to do. He's saying this is what God promised and I want to go do, right? God promised this territory to me, give it to me, it's enough for me, I'll take care of it. Instead, you've got Joseph coming across quite honestly a little whiny. I mean, we're a great big tribe, and you've only given us one allotment of territory." And Joshua says, well, no, you're not going to have just one allotment. You've got the hill country as well, and you can go and clear the forest there and settle that lowland. And they say, but no, the hill country won't be enough for us even if we take that, and down in the valley there are chariots of iron, and what are you going to do for us? You know, that's kind of the spirit. And such a contrast. This is the spirit that you will see in the first two chapters of the book of Judges. This is the kind of self-pity, timidity, and unbelief that brings us to the period of the Judges when Israel is being oppressed by her enemies because they are not trusting the Lord. So I bring that out just as kind of a, again, by way of contrast, to say, which example are we following much of the time, right? Am I following the courageous example of Caleb who is trusting God and seeking to wholly follow what the Lord has said, resting in His promises, acting upon His precepts? Or am I more like the sons of Joseph who are acting out of self-pity and timidity and unbelief, right? Well, if only someone else would do for me, you know, if somebody else would fix my problems, and everything that they offer to me, that just won't work either. Well, you know, that's a very different spirit, it seems to me, than what we see in Caleb. Does that make sense? Okay, real quick then, I think we've got time. Let's go to chapter 20. We've been waiting on this for, well, since we were in Deuteronomy. I gave you kind of an introduction to the cities of refuge in the book of Deuteronomy. And now we're going to kind of come deal with the tail end of this. You'll remember that the tribe of Levi does not receive a territorial allotment. Instead, they receive 48 cities within Canaan proper and the fields and pasture land that are immediately adjacent to those cities. Of those 48 cities, six of the cities, three on the east side of the Jordan, three on the west side of the Jordan, are designated as cities of refuge. And if you remember when we summarized the civil law of the Mosaic Covenant, in Israel, God takes life very seriously. If you committed an unjustified homicide, which is to kill another person without good reason, right? I know we always think we have a good reason, but you know what I mean. Legally, if you had no right to take that life, you were to be put to death. Period. Full stop. You were to be put to death. It didn't matter if you were sorry. It didn't matter how angry you'd gotten. You were to die. Your life is forfeit because that person is an image-bearer of God and whoever sheds man's blood by man's blood should be shed. Pretty simple, right? What if, though, you were responsible for the death of another person and it was accidental? The examples that Deuteronomy gives us, the axe head flies off the handle while you're cutting wood, strikes your brother in the head and kills him, right? You're clearing a ravine and you push a rock off and you don't see that another person is trapped underneath. You know, there are situations where there is manslaughter. Our judicial system recognizes this distinction, right? But in Israel, if you were guilty of manslaughter, you forfeited your freedom. One of the things I appreciate about the Mosaic Law is that there is no institutionalized system of incarceration. You were punished, you paid restitution, you could be executed, or you could be enslaved, but you never went to prison, right? And I would argue that much of that is far superior to our system today. That's a different conversation. But if you committed manslaughter, You had to go to one of the cities of refuge. You had to petition for your case to be heard, for there to be a trial. If the elders of the city adjudicated your case as, in fact, an example of manslaughter, then you were spared. You would not be executed. But you had to remain within the city of refuge until the high priest died. You were not incarcerated, but you had to leave your home, you had to leave your business. If your family wanted to go with you, they would have to relocate as well. You would have to stay within the confines of that city until the high priest died, which in some cases could be a life sentence, because you might die before the high priest did. Now as this territory is being settled, or at least divided up for the purposes of settling, there's some further instruction about the cities of refuge in chapter 20. Then Yahweh said to Joshua, Say to the people of Israel, appoint the cities of refuge of which I spoke to you through Moses, that the manslayer who strikes any person without intent or unknowingly may flee there. They shall be for you a refuge from the avenger of blood. He shall flee to one of these cities and shall stand at the entrance of the gate of the city and explain his case to the elders of that city. Then they shall take him into the city and give him a place and he shall remain with them. 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 was high priest at the time. Then the manslayer may return to his own hometown, to his own town and to his own home, to the town from which he fled. At the very end of the chapter in verse 9, these were the cities designated for all the people of Israel, and for the stranger 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, till he stood before the congregation. The assumption here, by the way, is that if you've been guilty of manslaughter, you truly are grieved by this. You notice the provision there that he did not hate him in the past. Nobody is going to believe a manslayer's defense if he has a history of animosity against the person that died. The presumption is this is a person who is truly penitent. He's not guilty of murder, and he deeply regrets that a life has been taken. But one of the things that we need to see here is how seriously God takes life. And we mentioned this back in Deuteronomy. You've got to see, God takes life seriously. And this is a frightening thing that in our nation today, we protect animals better and more diligently than we protect unborn children. Right? And we do not punish homicide in a consistently just manner. Sometimes we over-punish those who are not guilty, and oftentimes we under-punish those who are. Our judicial system is far from perfect. I'd rather be under it than any other system in the world today, but it is not just in many, many cases. And you can go to prison for killing certain animals and not go to prison for killing certain human beings. And we have a debate now about assisted suicide. That's just coming, folks. You just might as well resign yourself to that. That's going to be legalized everywhere, probably within most of our lifetimes. And you need to see how far out of balance our nation's ethical framework is. We have called evil good and good evil. God takes life very seriously. And not only that, but if you remember in Deuteronomy, the Lord says, if you've got a case of murder where you cannot identify the perpetrator, or because you don't have enough witness testimony, you cannot execute him, there was an entire process for the elders of the closest town to come and make atonement by means of sacrifice for that blood that was shed. God says the blood cries out from the ground for justice. What do you think 55 million unborn children's blood is doing right now? Right? So just think about that when you think that you live in a Christian nation. Just kind of get back to me about what a Christian nation looks like. Right? We slaughter the innocent and we allow the guilty to go unpunished. God does not accept that. God will not have any regard for that. At the same time, in the cities of refuge, you see the mercy of God. You see the way in which allowance is made for what is, in this case, an accident, and for a person who is truly penitent. For a person who has caused the death of another person, but not through any malice. He may be responsible for that death, and yet he is not, in the fullest sense, culpable for it. And God makes allowance for that. There needs to be mercy mixed with our justice. I told you that when we studied Deuteronomy, that many of the prescriptions for punishment in Deuteronomy appear to be maximum sentences. That they would not always necessarily reach that... It's not as simple as you're either punished or you're not punished, and if you are punished, this is where it's at. No, there is some discretion within the law. We see that in the Old Testament. And that's appropriate. There needs to be discernment, there needs to be judgment that is mixed with mercy. What I want you to think about tonight for just a minute is the Christological aspects of the cities of refuge. We hinted at this several months ago and I wanted to deal with this when we got to Joshua. You might look at this and you say, well, I don't see a clear type of Christ here. I mean, surely the manslayer is not a type of Christ. And it's even hard for me to see the manslayer as myself, because after all, I was the guy that committed murder, not the guy that committed manslaughter, right? I mean, my sin problem is not an accident, right? Even though I may be penitent at this point, it wasn't an accident. I was a rebel against God. I was deserving of death. Whereas we might have some pity on the manslayer. But the Christ figure in this story is not, in my judgment at least, the manslayer or the elders. It's the high priest. You do not ever have atonement apart from death. The only way that sin is forgiven is by means of the shedding of blood. And understand what the shedding of blood means. Jesus does not come and get his finger pricked. to save his people. He doesn't donate blood where they take a few vials. The shedding of blood in scripture refers to the taking of a life, the loss of life. The wages of sin is death. The reason that we are under the penalty of death because of our sin is that we were made in the image of God. God breathed into our nostrils the breath of life. He gave us life for the purpose of knowing Him and glorifying Him. And we took that gift and we grossly abused it. Right? We destroyed that which God gave us. And that's why our life is forfeit. Now, you don't have forgiveness without a loss of life. It may be a sacrifice. It may be, in the case of a murderer, your own. Who dies in place of the manslayer in this story? The high priest does. This is not the only time you're going to see this in the Old Testament. We're going to come back here when we get to 2 Samuel, really, more than 1 Samuel. There are occasions where woven into the biblical story, there is a type of Christ who dies not as a sacrifice, but nevertheless suffers the death of the wrongdoer. And I believe it's the high priest here. The high priest is not executed for a crime. He dies a natural death. And yet, how long was the sinner in bondage? until the high priest died. Guess how long you and I are in bondage to sin? We're in bondage to sin until the high priest dies. There's no animal sacrifice here that serves as a type of Christ. It's not the offender himself who is the type of Christ, it's the high priest whose life is in place of the manslayer. And I think points ahead to Jesus, who as the high priest offers himself, offers his own blood, and the guilty go free. Does that make sense? So I think there is a Christological dimension to this. We can only be saved by the death of the innocent high priest, the one who is not guilty of this crime. You couldn't have a manslayer be set free by paying restitution to the family. You couldn't go free. By any works of his hands, I'm going to try and be a good person, I'm going to save three other people's lives and then I can go free. I'm not going to be able to repent my way into freedom. I'm really, really sorry. I'll be more careful in the future." It doesn't matter. There's only one way out of that city. The only way out of that city is the death of the high priest. Now, last point and then we'll go. One other possible way in which the cities of refuge point to Christ is the city itself. The city of refuge becomes the place where you can flee to find Safety, right? And Christ is that city of refuge. Christ is that strong tower. Christ is that rock where we can hide and God puts his hand over us as we hide in the cleft. And so I think there is a Christological dimension just to the idea that God provides a place of security and that rest is always, typologically speaking, Christ. So I'll give you two possibilities. For me, the high priest is maybe the big one. Okay, yeah, yeah, the way that faith brings us to. Yeah, it's the object of the faith, Christ himself, not faith. Yeah, exactly. That's good. That's good. All right, does that make sense? Okay, so I hope this was not too just all over the map. I mean, jumping through those chapters. But I wanted to move through that section and just lift some of those ideas out. Now, before we close in prayer, let me tell you where we're going to go. For next week, you can read chapters 22 and 23. And we're just going to march through those two chapters. We may not be able to make it all the way through both of those chapters in one class, but you'll be prepared either way. And then, Lord willing, the following week, we'll cover chapter 24. And so those last three chapters have got a lot of really great material in them that we want to explore and take apart. It is good stuff. Yeah. Like, for instance, when Joshua tells Israel, you cannot serve the Lord because He's holy. Does that unsettle you at all? They say, oh, we'll serve the Lord. And he says, you cannot serve the Lord because He's holy. Yeah, I enjoy teaching that section. But you'll have to come back in a couple of weeks if you want to hear that section. Alright, that's in chapter 24. You can read ahead. Yeah, Sandy. Yes, ma'am. Lord willing. Yep. We'll do judges after that. Yep. My intention is for right now in these Wednesday night classes to just keep marching through the historical literature. I want to give you that bird's eye view before we try and do anything too detailed. Alright? Okay, thank you for being here tonight. Let's close our time in prayer. Our God and Father, we marvel at the ways in which your work in the history of your people shows to us your power and your promises. The promises that you kept, the promises that you've made and will yet keep. The way in which you providentially worked in their lives even as you work in ours for the good that you have appointed. Lord, we do thank you for Christ, who is a place of refuge for us, and who is the high priest whose life was given in our stead. And we thank you indeed, O God, for your servant Caleb, for the way that his faith and his desire to wholly follow you serves as a model for us all. We pray, O God, that You would bless us, that the stories that we've looked at, the texts that we have read, would rest upon our heart, and that You would use it for our good and for the up-building of Your people. We continue to pray, Lord, that Your mercy would be upon us. For we know, O God, that apart from Christ and apart from Your grace, we are in bondage to sin and without hope. And yet we thank You, O God, that You did send the Son into the world as a Savior for sinners. And we rest in Him, we thank You for Him, and we pray in His name. Amen.