Well, we've gotten up to Joshua chapter 15, and we're going to begin reading at verse 20. This is the word of the Lord that he has given for your benefit. God says, this was the inheritance of the tribe of the children of Judah according to their families. The cities at the limits of the tribe of the children of Judah toward the border of Edom in the south were Kabzil, Edir, Jagur, Kinnah, Dimona, Adadah, Kadesh, Hazor, Githnon, Ziph, Telem, Bealoth, Hazor, Hadata, Keriath, Hezron, which is Hazor, Amam, Shema, Melada, Hazor, Gada, Heshmon, Beth, Pellet, Hazor, Shu'al, Bersheba, Biz, Jath, Jah, Ba'alah, Ijim, Ezem, El-Tolad, Shesil, All the cities were 29 with their villages. 14 cities with their villages. Migdal, Gad, Dillion, Mizpah, Jokthil, Lekesh, Bozkath, Eglon, Kaban, Lamas, Kithlish, Gedroth, Bethdagon, Naama, and Makeda, 16 cities with their villages. Libna, Ether, Ashan, Jiftha, Ashna, Nezib, Kela, Akhzib, and Mareysha, nine cities with their villages. Ekron with its towns and villages, from Ekron to the sea, all that lay near Ashdod with their villages. Ashdod with its towns and villages, Gaza with its towns and villages, as far as the brook of Egypt and the great sea with its coastline. And in the mountain country, Shamir, Jatir, Soko, Dana, Kirjasana, which is Debir, Anab, Eshtemo, Anim, Goshen, Holon, and Gilo, 11 cities with their villages. Duma, Eshion, Janum, Beth-Tapua, Afeka, Humta, Kirjath Arba, which is Hebron, and Zior, nine cities with their villages. Maon, Carmel, Zif, Juta, Jezreel, Jogdeon, Zanoa, Kain, Givya and Timna, ten cities with their villages. Halhul, Bezur, Gedur, Ma'arath, Beth-anath, and El-Tekon, six cities with their villages. Kirjath-Be'al, which is Kirjath-Jerum, and Rabah, two cities with their villages. In the wilderness, Beth Arba, Midin, Sekaka, Nibshan, the city of salt, and En Gedi, six cities with their villages. As for the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the children of Judah, could not drive them out, but the Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah at Jerusalem to this day. Father, we thank you for this, your word, and we pray that as we dig into it, you would anoint my lips to faithfully preach your word, and that you would bless this, your people, in Jesus' name, amen. I have a book in my library that's designed to teach us preachers how to preach, and it's actually a pretty good book. But in that book, it suggested that chapters 16 through 21 of Joshua, quote, don't have too much to say to contemporary congregations, unquote. And the general consensus is you really ought not to preach passages like this. So why did I read the entire passage? And why am I not skipping over it like virtually all pastors on the web seem to do? I think you already know the answer from the past. It's in your outline. I believe that God gave every word of scripture to be for our benefit. And, uh, he says in Deuteronomy chapter 10, uh, excuse me, eight verse three, he commands us to live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. And of course, Jesus quotes that verse in Matthew four, verse four, and he affirms that. So that means there's gotta be something in these verses that we can live by. And that's what we're going to dig for this morning. In Matthew 10, Jesus appealed to one word in a very obscure passage that's very difficult to understand, and he gave as his reason why he brought that word up to his adversaries that he was debating with, that the Scriptures cannot be broken. Even the tough sections of Scripture cannot be broken. Now it is true that not all words are equally important for preaching. There are some things in here that are more intended for us scholars who are applying it in other areas of life. So I'm just going to be focusing today on the parts of this section that really directly apply into your lives. And the first lesson that I see in this chapter is the importance of cities in relationship to farms. We just read the names of 122 cities. Believe me, I had to practice this looking at the Hebrew pronunciation is hard. And for God to go to all of the trouble of listing out all of those cities, it must be important to him. And I believe that the importance is what we're going to be looking at this morning. When you trace what the Bible says about cities from Genesis through Revelation, you will find that the concept of the city is a very, very important concept in the Bible. So the Bible begins in chapter 1 with a godly garden. And it ends with a godly city, and that progression from garden to city was not by accident, not at all. For the dominion mandate of Genesis chapter 1 to be able to be fulfilled, there had to be the development of godly cities. God commanded the building of cities, blessed Israel by enabling them to inherit cities and villages. Much later, he called the post-exilic community to come back from Babylon and to build godly cities to his honor. Okay, there's a rich theology of cities from Genesis through Revelation with, of course, Revelation ending with a beautiful description of a magnificent, huge city that brings blessing to the entire world. Now, I'm not going to take the time this morning to give you an entire theology of cities. Believe me, an entire book could be written on that subject. There's a lot in there that I won't delve into today. But I've mentioned this much because a lot of people disdain living in cities and they think it's much more spiritual to live on a farm or to live out in the country far away from other people. OK, but let's think about that for a minute. Do people on the farm produce everything that they need? Everything that they use? Everything that they eat? No. They even have to go to the store to buy some things that other farmers have produced, and they certainly use on their farms a lot of things that they could not produce on their own. Without specialization that is provided by the cities, you would not have the technology to be able to can your own homegrown foods, or to freeze-dry them, if you prefer that. You wouldn't have electricity, rototillers, shovels, cars, cell phones, a host of other things that farmers use. Now, I can appreciate the desire to live in the countryside as a preference. If that's your preference, that's A-OK. But I want you to realize that there are huge advantages to cities, and the farmers benefited from the cities, and the cities benefited from the farmers. Now, I won't give you an exhaustive list of why cities can be both a blessing and a curse. And yes, cities can be a curse. But let me suggest a few ways in which cities and villages are indeed a tremendous blessing. And hopefully this chapter here will erase from your minds forever any idea that it's more spiritual to work on a farm than it is to sell vehicles in a city. It is not. It is not. First, if everyone lived self-sufficiently on his own farm, there would be no division of labor, and it would be impossible to completely fulfill the dominion mandate that was given in Genesis chapter 1. Impossible. Division of labor can obviously be used to promote evil too, but it's also used for tremendous good, and division of labor is essential for the fulfilling of all of the commandments that God has given to us. Second, division of labor enabled specialization of labor in the Bible, such as pastors. and craftsmen, and doctors, and traders. Jesus and his apostles did not live on a farm. Now, they certainly benefited from what the farmers produced. We all do, right? But they specialized in preaching and evangelism. Third, this division of labor and specialization, in turn, enabled them to promote technological advances. It would be impossible to build the massive tractors and combines, you know, the harvesters that farmers use today without the technical and technological advances that division of labor and specialization have enabled. And the same was true in the Bible. If you study, and it's an interesting study, the history of technology from Genesis all the way up till the New Testament was finished, you will realize that those technologies could not have been developed if everybody was self-sufficient on their own farm. They could not have been. Think of the existence in the Bible of ceramics. What a wonderful invention ceramics was. Or wheels. What a blessing wheels were. You cannot imagine what it was like before there were wheels. Or medicine. Iron smelting, iron tools, and shovels, and plows, and axes, and arrows, and chariots, and enduring stone highways, and a host of other technologies that would not have been produced if there were not cities. OK? Fourth. These technological advances, in turn, helped to lower the costs of production and began to generate wealth for everyone, including the farmer. Fifth, the most efficient ways for centers of trade and culture to develop was through the cities. Granted, They can produce a concentrated evil in culture as well as concentrated good, but the city by itself is not evil. It is how the city is used. God's plan was for the citizens to use these 122 cities faithfully. And then finally, the farmers who were blessed by God were able to sell, because they produce so much, were able to sell their excess produce to the cities and gain enough money to be able to buy the technologies that the cities produced. There was a mutual benefit of both for each other. This is just basic biblical economics. The bottom line is that the cultural mandate given in Genesis 1 cannot be achieved on farms alone. God calls us to take dominion of every facet of life, not just farming. And thus, there are numerous passages that speak of the incredible blessing of cities and the trouble people automatically experience when cities are vaporized by war. And I'm just going to read one verse. I could give you dozens of verses that are along these same lines, but Psalm 107, verses 4 through 9 say this. They wandered in the wilderness in a desolate way. They found no city to dwell in. Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them. Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and He delivered them out of their distresses. And He led them forth by the right way, that they might go to a city for a dwelling place. Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for His goodness, And for his wonderful works to the children of men, for he satisfies the longing soul and fills the hungry soul with goodness. Now, if you were from the tribe of Judah back then, you would have been blessed to have inherited these cities. You would have considered this to be a tremendously good provision, just like the Psalm says. And you would have been thankful that God only mandated the destruction of a few cities. And we saw in previous sermons why some of those cities were destroyed. The other cities, towns, and villages were instantly able to be inhabited, which gave Judah a jumpstart on taking dominion of every area of life while they lived in the land. Now, here's the thing. God forced division of labor, specialization, and the resultant economic advances that both city and farm could produce. Let me repeat that. In this chapter, God forced the division of labor, specialization, and the resultant economic advances that both city and farm could produce. Now Rush Dooney, in one of his volumes on the institutes, also talks about how the city was the God-ordained locus for justice, where justice was administered publicly in the gates of the city. In fact, the whole countryside, the farmers themselves, got their justice in the gates of the city. It was the place for town council meetings, court sessions, public hearings, all of the other necessary administrations of justice. Now cities have other purposes too, I won't get into, but I think I've said enough to show that cities have an important place in God's plan, and all of us need to appreciate that and recognize the legitimacy of that place. Okay, enough said on that. But this passage doesn't just mention cities, it mentions towns and villages. And the wording is very, very interesting. Verse 32 says, all the cities are twenty-nine with their villages. There's some kind of a connection between the cities and the villages, and you see the same thing in verse 36, 14 cities with their villages. Similar language is found in several other places. Verse 45 adds, with its towns and villages, as does verse 47. Now in a later point, I will comment on the division of this chapter into 11 groupings. But let me anticipate that, because I think it'll help to correct a slightly wrong view that at least some people hold to. It's not a huge point. But some people think that the county, they're trying to figure out why was it listed the way it is. And they think, well, the county is named after the chief city in that county. And then all of the towns and villages belong to that city. But that's not the way it's worded in this chapter. It's not just one city in a county that has its towns and villages. All of them did, and there are clearly not 122 counties in Judah. There were only 11. Now, there's a different relationship that makes cities very close to their towns and villages, and I just want to talk for a little bit about that close relationship. The relationship is so close that sometimes in the scripture, the villages are actually spoken of as the daughters of the city. You could just sort of think of it like urban sprawl. You know, it's a daughtering of these towns and villages or an urban sprawl that happens. So the literal Hebrew of Numbers 21-25 and 2 Chronicles 13-19 The city with its daughters though almost all the translations Translated the city with its villages right just like it is here But it's it's using that to speak of a very very close relationship between city and village. What is that relationship? well first the city was fortified whereas the towns and the villages were not and so anytime that there was a you know, a foreign army that succeeded in getting that close in, the people would flee from their farms, from the villages, and from the towns into the city and they would take their produce and their cattle and their money with them and that would enable them to survive a pretty long siege. But for other dependencies, let me quote from Joel Drinkard, who speaks of the mutual dependence that cities, villages, and farms had with each other. This is speaking of their function together entirely apart from their county structure. He says the Old Testament speaks of the fields of a city or village Large cities would not have had enough land surrounding to meet its food needs, so they would depend on the trade of the surplus produce from the smaller villages. The villages, in turn, would depend on the cities for the manufactured goods and items of trade from distant areas. Now, I don't think I need to say more on this, but just from what I've said so far, I think you can see that farm, village, town, and city all played vital roles in the economic life of Israel. The villages tended to have the industries that were much more frequently needed by the farmers, such as blacksmiths. Towns were a little bit further removed, and then there was much more specialization that went on in the city. Now the next interesting thing about this list of cities is that nine of them were Levitical cities where the theological experts among the Levites were able to reside. And I should mention that not all of the Levites resided in these Levitical cities. Later scripture says, no, they were scattered into every town in Hamlet throughout Israel. And it was so that they could pastor the local congregations. Now, the Levites were called scribes. They were the teaching elders. They were the trained theologians and the pastors. They were not the ruling elders. Ruling elders were not clergy. They were lay leaders who came from other tribes. And we'll get into that in a bit. But in this chapter, God ensured that there would be cities where large groups of Levites would live so as to specialize in studying the Bible and applying it to life. And they would train others in that application. And they would be available to help civic officers who had questions like, oh boy, we've got a really tough question here. Let's go to the Levites and see what the Bible says about how we can engage in this particular problem in our civil life. By the way, our denomination, in its form of Church Government, Chapter 6, Section 3, recognizes this role when it speaks of one of the many roles of pastors as being, quote, to counsel civil magistrates when requested to do so, unquote. And I'm bringing that up because I don't want you to think that the pastor's only role is to serve the local congregation. We have a mandate to serve the broader community and, in fact, the nation as a whole. But the Levites and the Levitical cities were needed for far more than simply giving advice to civil magistrates. The Levitical cities were places where huge advancements in theology and the application of God's Word to every area of life could take place. So you can basically think of these Levitical cities as think tanks. We have a desperate need for think tanks today. And praise God, they are reappearing in North America. Calcedon Foundation has been a think tank for a long, long time, but there are others that are springing up, like Joe Boots' think tank up in Canada. You can think of Jeff Durbin down on Mesa, Arizona, and there's a lot of other think tanks that are beginning to come up. But the Levitical cities here are Ein, Beth Shemesh, Debir, Eshtimoah, Hebron, Holon, Jatir, Jutah, and Libna. They housed the best theological acumen of the Levitical tribe. Now, other Levites were scattered into every hamlet of Israel. And why was this the case? Well, back in Genesis, you may remember that there was a curse that Jacob pronounced upon two of his sons, Levi and Simeon, because of their incredible cruelty. And hopefully they repented of that before they died, but there was a curse that was placed upon them that they would be scattered throughout Israel, would not have their own state, their own territory that they would be able to inherit. We see that in this chapter. The Levites are scattered throughout Israel. And as to Simeon, nine of the cities that chapter 19 is said to be given to Simeon is listed now in this chapter as being in Judah, under the jurisdiction of Judah. So they were citizens of Judah, just like the other Levites, maybe in Dan and other tribes. They were citizens of those states where they resided. Now here's the point. Though the original Levi was cursed, God turned the curse into a blessing by enabling trained theologians to be pastors in every synagogue of Israel. He's able to turn the curses of our ancestors into blessings. Praise God. That's one of the things I love about this chapter. And the other Levites that were scattered in every town and village were a blessing, too, since they worked together with the local elders to help provide oversight over congregations of Israel. Now we call them synagogues, but they're just the churches. By the way, James calls the church the synagogue, right? form, true form of Presbyterianism is exactly the same in the Old Testament synagogue system as it is in the New Testament assemblies. The Levites were the teaching elders and the other elders came from the lay people of that congregation. There's always been a distinction between teaching elders and ruling elders and praise God our denomination is restudying this and there seems to be some consensus in the denomination of moving in that direction whether they go in the direction of one office of elder with two orders, which is the way I take it, or two offices of ruling elder and teaching elder, but there is study, pray for them, that we would be able to get this all mapped out, because there is a lot of logistics that need to be thought through. But there's an additional interesting fact about one of these Levitical cities, as the one mentioned in verse 54, And that is that it is a city of refuge. It's Kiriath Arba, which will later have its name changed to Hebron. And we're going to be delving, by the way, into the cities of refuge in chapter 20 in much more depth back then. So all I'm going to say right now is that the church itself was involved in rescuing people from injustice. It was a kind of interposition. Well, that meant that those judging the manslaughter cases had to be experts in God's law, which they were. It was the Levites who occupied the cities of refuge, and Christendom followed this pattern. For hundreds of years, it was the church that had this kind of expertise, and it was the church that functioned as the city of refuge, a sanctuary from injustice. Now, sadly, the church of today is so backslidden and biblically illiterate that I don't know that I would trust a lot of churches to be giving justice, the kind of justice that God intended. But praise God, the CPC, I believe, is up to delivering good justice with good procedure. I've seen it over and over. I think our denomination has done a very, very good job. But back to the Middle Ages and beyond, the church communities where the theological think tanks existed became equivalents to these cities of refuge, and even the emperors of the Christendom respected the church's role in that. The emperor dared not invade the churches or overturn their pronouncements of innocence. And so that's just a little bit to whet your appetite for chapter 20. There's a lot more in this book that we're going to be getting into. Cities of refuge were a very important part of God's plan. By the way, they also had a symbolic, typological pointing to Christ. You know, we have to flee to Christ. And so even the gospel is embedded in those cities. But we'll deal with all of that when we get to chapter 20. And I've already touched on the next point, that nine of the cities listed in verses 21 through 47 are said to belong to the tribe of Simeon in chapter 19. Those cities of the tribe of Simeon were under Judah's jurisdiction, and eventually the Simeonites were completely assimilated into Judah. And I've already given some application. Let me give you two more applications just related to the tribe of Simeon. What God promised in Genesis 49, He kept in this chapter. He is a promise-keeping God. That's one application. But it also illustrates the impact that the sins of parents can have on succeeding generations. That's why it's so important that we parents work diligently on overcoming the things that we grew up with, so we don't pass it on to our kids. We've got to be diligent. But again, God turned even that into a cursing. Their assimilation into Judah would later prove to be a tremendous blessing. I won't say more about that this morning, nor will I spend a lot of time on the next point. Commentators point out that Judah was divided into 11 districts in this chapter, whatever those districts were. There is no debate about the fact it's divided into 11 districts. That's crystal clear. And I've put the names of those 11 districts into the text box in your outlines. But all of the 122 cities are listed in groupings within each of those 11 districts. So what were those 11 districts? Some commentators are puzzled by these districts, but the simple answer, I'll just give you the straightforward, but I think the simple answer is they are the Mishpacha that we looked at in verse one. wrongly translated as families. Clans would be closer, but even that's not accurate. We saw that it meant counties. They were the counties, the smallest unit within the state. Now, cities, towns, and villages were also governments, but they were related to the county, not to the state, and the county was related to the state. So that's kind of the way that the governmental structure was made up. And so these districts simply reinforce all of the applications I made to civics, what was it, two or three sermons ago. Okay, the last lesson that I want to give this morning is that Judah was not successful in defeating all the Canaanites. Verses 45 through 47 list three Philistine cities that still existed, and they existed within Judah. That's the point. Those three cities are said to be Ekron, Ashdod, and Gaza. Now, they were given to Judah, but Judah did not claim them. God expected them to take them, but they did not do so. And those three cities continued to be under Philistine control all the way up to the time of King David. Verse 63 mentions that Jerusalem was still occupied by the Jebusites, and it continued to be occupied by the Jebusites all the way up to the time of King David, who was the ideal king. That means that Judah failed in its conquest when it preferred to live at peace with the pagans. In contrast, David, who typified Jesus, conquered them. Verse 63 says, as for the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the children of Judah, could not drive them out, but the Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah at Jerusalem to this day. Now, God had intended Jerusalem to be a place where the word reigns supreme over the surrounding area, and it once did. If you read Hebrews chapters 5, 6, and 7, you will see that Melchizedek was the king of Salem, and Salem is simply an abbreviated name for Jerusalem in Genesis chapter 14. Everybody agrees with that. Okay, it's an abbreviated name. Melchizedek was either the pre-incarnate son of God, or much more likely, a godly priest-king who was a symbolic type of Jesus. And I tend to believe it was a literal earthly king who was a type of Jesus. Well, that means Melchizedek represented one of the godly cities in the book of Genesis. Jerusalem went way, way back in time. But over time, Salem apostatized. and was occupied by God-haters, and what God intended to be a scripture-saturated capital of Israel stayed as a pagan city that became saturated with the wisdom of man. Here's the thing. If God's word is not the ruling document of a nation, some other word will automatically become the law of the land. That's exactly what's happened in America. America has rejected the perfect law of liberty. And we're now groaning under so many onerous laws. that, as one person said, every citizen might inadvertently at some point become a felon without even realizing it. There's a couple of books that have documented this, but I've read on two or three studies by the federal government trying to figure out how many laws are in the books, and they say they can't do it. They cannot do it. That's what happens when God's minimal laws of liberty are rejected. So God wants the capital of every nation to be ruled by a godly Melchizedek, a civil magistrate who was a Christian who was in tune with God's perfect law of liberty. Now in Judges chapter 1, Israel conquered the lower, unwalled part of Jerusalem, but not the citadel. But even that lower part of Jerusalem was quickly taken back by the Jebusites just a few verses later. And all the way up into the time of Judges 19, 11 through 12, it is still called an alien city. Right within Judah, an alien city. That's a sad tribute to Judah's failure. And verse 63 is added by a later inspired prophetic editor of Joshua in the time of Judges. The phrase, to this day, does not refer to the day of Joshua. but to the time of a later prophet. Later prophets would sometimes add explanatory notes by God's authorization to earlier books. Now in this case, we know for a fact that the inspired prophet who added this note had to be during the time of the judges and not later. If you read liberal books, by the way, you just cannot trust all of the books out there, all the commentaries out there. There's just so much rubbish. But liberal books claim that most of the books of the Bible were written way later than they really were. And they claim that Joshua wasn't even written until after Israel was cast into exile, somewhere back there. And the reason, there's many reasons why that's absolutely ridiculous. But one of the reasons is this verse here. This verse proves that the book had to be written earlier than David because David conquered Jerusalem. And this says, Jebusites continued with it to this day. So they're not looking at all of the facts. Anyway, in my footnotes, when it gets up on the web, I'll give ample proof that 99.9% of Joshua was written by Joshua himself. And Joshua 24, 26 says, Joshua wrote the words of this book into the Book of the Law, in other words, into the canon. He was the one who added it to the Pentateuch. Joshua did, and then a later inspired editor just made a few edits in to explain certain historical facts, and that's what to this day means. But why was this note included here? Many commentators believe it's a rebuke to Judah for failing to have the faith of Caleb and Othniel. It stands in such stark contrast to the faith of Caleb and Othniel that we looked at earlier in this chapter. So apparently the generals of Judah Got tired of fighting, and they ended up saying they're going to be content with living side by side with the very ones that God had doomed to destruction. Here's the thing. You cannot live at peace with anything that God has declared war against without experiencing negative consequences in your life. And those negative consequences are listed in the book of Judges. And I love the application that Jack Hayford wrote. He said, here is the first hint of the failure of Israel's conquests. Their failure would negatively affect the moral and social fiber of their lives for generations. God does not want us to fail to drive the enemy completely out from our lives, homes, and families. Unresolved issues leave a crack in the door into the invisible realm that can allow the powers of darkness a foothold in our lives. For example, If a person has won the victory over fear, but begins to entertain anxious thoughts, then the spirit of fear may dominate his or her life again. Likewise, if one has been delivered from a problem with pornography, but chooses to watch movies with suggestive scenes, then he or she risks being bound again by lust. In every case, the enemy must be completely driven out and the door slammed shut. And I say amen. Tremper Longman, Robert Hubbard, A.W. Pink, they all point to the fact that their failure to follow the Lord's command to completely conquer all of these Canaanites meant that the Canaanites would continue to be a snare and a temptation to idolatry for generations to come. They were a thorn in the flesh to the Israelites. As we have seen before, it's imperative that we declare an all-out war against the world, the flesh, and the devil, and that we purpose to enter fully into all that Jesus purchased for us, not getting tired, continually pressing into the upward call God has given to us. May the Lord help us to do that. Amen. Father, I thank you for this portion of Scripture, and there's so much more that is buried in it, and I pray that we would live by every word of Scripture, value it, love it, cherish it, and grow through it. I pray that you would bless this, your people, in Jesus' name. Amen.