So, page 130 in the digital book and which is physical because I printed it for you. And what's that digitally, physically printed? 138 in my book here. If you get the, I don't know, I don't know if he's updated his, these books or not, but I've got a lot of these from older times and then some of the digital he updates. Some things he trims back and says, for more on this, read this study, you know, because he's got other books on particular studies that he'll elaborate on. So, this is study number 28 of this, or session number 28, rather, of this study. And we're probably about halfway through the book or so, looks like, roughly. And one of these days here in a few years, we'll be done with this. But we're talking about studying the topics of the Bible. And we're looking at a specific topic and how to study it. Remember, we break it down into four different steps for studying the topics of the Bible. First of all, we're going through the Bible and writing down all the important verses that pertain to that topic. And then going to define the terms that are used for that topic. We're going to write down the main lessons from each verse, and we're going to organize the lessons into an outline. So concerning the topic of murder so far, we've looked at the particular passages here that he's got listed out. And then as we go through these passages, each passage that he has listed here, we deal with the application of that passage. So, um, as we looked at Exodus 22 verse versus two and three, uh, speaking of a thief here, it says, uh, if a thief be found breaking up and smitten that he die, there should be no bloodshed for him. If the sun be risen upon him, there shall be bloodshed for him for, uh, he shall make full restitution. If he have done nothing, then, uh, shall I be If you have nothing sorry, he shall then shall he be sold for his death So what we see here about this and of course we we talked about What the Bible says about killing? That that murder is wrong. And so we're looking at now the exceptions it seems and so he says here it is not murder to kill a thief if he is breaking into your house and Um, this is now I'll say, though, that this is speaking of nighttime, uh, or a situation where where there's what's a it's speaking of a situation where the thief is caught and there's there's some sort of danger. The cloak of night allows for that sort of danger, you know, where you don't know what's going to happen. You don't know what they have or don't have. And so, you know, when you're stopping the thief, you need to be careful to maintain the security of your family. And so in some cases, it means that that thief, well, unfortunately dies. If it's in the day and it's obvious they don't have anything, then you deal with it in a different manner, but you can't always know. And so there's a lot of circumstantial things there, but the Bible speaks of it being justified in protection of really it's protection of your your family, but it's also protection of your property. But you don't just kill somebody because they're trying to steal your car unless they're trying to kill you and steal your car. Then there's justifiable cause, or as we call it in our country, just Bible homicide. Um, so numbers Chapter 35 versus 16 to 31 give some more, um, Examples here. So let's look at those passages real quick here It says and if he smite him with an instrument of iron so that he die He is a murderer. The murderer shall surely be put to death if he smite him with a throwing stone wherewith he may die and He die. He is a murderer. The murderer shall be shall surely be put to death If he or if he smite him with an hand weapon of wood Wherewith he may die and he die. He is a murderer. The murderer shall surely be put to death The revenger of blood himself shall slay the murderer. When he meeteth him, he shall slay him. But if he thrust him of hatred or hurl at him by laying of weight that he die, or in enmity smite him with this hand that he die, he that smote him shall surely be put to death. For he is a murderer. The revenger of blood shall slay the murderer when he meeteth him. Verse number 22. But if he thrust him suddenly without enmity, or if cast upon him anything without lying of weight, or with any stone, wherewith a man may die, seeing him not, and cast it upon him that he die, and was not his enemy, neither sought his harm, then the congregation shall judge between the slayer and the revenger of blood according to these judgments. And so here's what he's gonna say. to do, to judge this. Oh, by the way, remember we were talking about judging and all that? Well, he gives a command here. The congregation shall judge. Judgment is necessary. So it says, and the congregation shall deliver the slayer out of the hand of the revenger of blood, and the congregation shall restore him to the city of his refuge, whither he was fled. Let's see here. I didn't skip a pass. I thought I might have skipped a verse And he shall abide in it unto the death of the high priest, which was anointed with the holy oil. And if the slayer shall at any time come without the border of the city of his refuge, whether or whether he was fled and the revenger of blood find him without the borders of the city of his refuge and the revenger of blood kill the slayer, he shall not be guilty of blood. That interesting. You just catch what he's saying there. He's saying that if if someone killed someone and there was some sort of controversy as to whether or not it was it was on purpose or whether it was murder or whether it was like an accidental thing, you know, or, you know, it was just a cause and effect kind of thing. They weren't premeditating. They weren't planning it. They didn't hate the person. It just happened. It says that this the slayer would go to a city of refuge. And in that city of refuge, he would be safe from that, from the revenger of blood, revenger of blood being the next of kin in that case. And so the revenger of blood couldn't do anything as long as he's in that city. Let's say he leaves the city, and now the revenger of blood sees him in the market in another city. He can justifiably take the life of that other man because he's not in the city of refuge. that interesting. So there's a lot of I hear wheels turning here now. But, uh, yes, sir. Well, except we don't. We don't offer them if they're, you know, if they're caught outside their city. But we sometimes will deport in terms of sanctuary cities. Um, there's I don't know if it says it here or not, but it does. It does explain in the word how that's picked. There's specific cities that are cities of refuge. So, um, I don't I don't believe it tells us here. Um, it says it explains why it says because he should have remained in the city of his refuge until the death of the high priest. But after the death of the high priest, the slayer shall return into the into the land of his possession. By the way, there are a lot of things about the land of your possession, all that kind of thing. So like. You guys remember the concept of Jubilee, maybe, maybe not. The Jubilee is after 50 years, 49 years, 50 years, every 50 years, the land of Israel would have a reset. And so during that 50 years, if you were enslaved during that 50 years, sold into slavery or whatever at in the year of Jubilee, you were set free during that 50 years. If you sold your property, your family's property, then it would be given back to you at that 50th year. But that's not just you. It's everybody else. And so their economy would actually operate based on this 50 year cycle. And so when that 50 years would be coming up, obviously, if I'm gonna buy a property from you to use and we've only got six or seven years left, I'm going to pay you less than if I bought it after the year of Jubilee and we had 50 years to use it. You know, so that's that was the concept of the Jubilee. And so when it speaks of the land of his possession, that's what it's talking about. This land was was owned by that family. That tribe held that land. And so that's how they kept that in place. In fact, God gave a specific area of the nation there to specific tribes. And so those borders of their tribe, of their tribal area, they would control that. And if they sold to another tribe, they had to reset after 50 years so that it would always go back to the way that it originally was. Just an interesting concept. But it appears that a city of refuge is going to be outside of your possessed land. So if you commit Homicide and it's not and it's not deemed to be murder. You have to leave your land To go somewhere else That's a I mean, that's a pretty pretty big thing in that time, you know because they lived off of their land So it's like well the land in my possession. So you either have to go to this other city and buy land there or you have to go to this other city and and work for someone else Whereas it was the common thing was you took care of yourself. You raise your own cattle. You do you. You raise your own vegetables. You do your own homesteading and take care of your own family. You don't work for someone else. Generally, that was the concept. OK, so in in this particular case, you know, you're even though you may not be guilty of premeditated murder, it still messes with your way of life. pretty heavily. Um, so it goes on though. It says, uh, so these things shall be for a statute unto under you throughout your generations in your dwellings. Who? So kill with any person. The murderer shall be put to death by the mouth of witnesses by one witness shall, uh, says, but one witness shall not testify against any person to cause him to die. Moreover, you shall take no satisfaction for the life of a murderer, which is guilty of death. But he shall surely be put to death. So in other words, you can't you're not allowed to take vengeance and have and be satisfied or have some sort of satisfaction from the death of this murderer. It's just a simple. He did this, this happens, it's not a you killed my father, prepare to die kind of situation, it's more of a you know, he killed him. There's a there's due process. As you see, there has to be more than one witness. That's another. That's another question. Two people were in a field by themselves. One comes back. The other doesn't. What happened? Where the witnesses innocent until proven guilty. He doesn't just die. He doesn't. He doesn't just get executed because he came back and the other guy died. They don't know if it was an accident or not. Now, of course, there could be testifying against that guy saying they were enemies. And, you know, this they had a long history and multiple people could testify of that. Then you have a case. But if you just have two guys that may or may not have known each other before. Go into a field and only one come back alive. there isn't necessarily anything you can do about it without a witness. Um, which is interesting because there's that same similar concept goes for most other crimes committed against a person. Um, and so, you know, you have to have a witness of the crime. Um, and that's the way our society was built. Although in Indiana, now you can make an accusation for specific types of crimes and that person has to prove that they didn't do it or or else they're automatically guilty because you made an accusation. Your witness is enough of a witness against the perpetrator or the alleged perpetrator to have them convicted and put into prison. So I know multiple people that have been falsely accused, but because it couldn't be proved that because it couldn't be proven that it was a false accusation, they went to prison. Yes. Yes, sir. Right. That's true. That's true. Yeah, that's the other side of that. That's you know, this is why our standard in terms of youth ministry or any ministry is that you always have witnesses. You know, if you're not in my immediate family, generally speaking, especially if you're of the opposite gender, We're not hanging out together by ourselves. That's that's our standard, not because not because anything's going to happen, but because if anyone accused it, accused someone of doing something. Well, we have witnesses that can either affirm or deny what happened or didn't happen. And that's the concept, you know, and I was taught that from, you know, from our other church we came from. we were sent to start this one anyways, they. The rule was, you know, if you're even if you're a youth director or youth teacher or whatever, if you're in a classroom and there's other kids in the classroom, if there aren't any other kids that are your kids, the door had to stay open so that there were witnesses of what was happening in the classroom, not because you were going to do anything, but because one of those kids might accuse you of doing something. if you don't have an adult witness or Kids of your own that were in the class that could witness it as well. Then you don't have you know in our state You're guilty whether you are or not. You're guilty because you can't prove you're not That's the one law Or one that I know of anyways where you can be accused and you're guilty until proven innocent and that that's not right It's not scriptural, but that's the way that they do it. So I Um, anyways, that's a whole other story. We're talking about how to study a particular topic here. And the topic we're looking at here is murder. But it goes on, gives us a little bit more information, uh, says, uh, and you shall take no satisfaction for him that has fled to the city of his refuge, uh, that he should come again to dwell in the land until the death of the high priest or of the priest. So you shall not pollute the land wherein ye are, for blood it defileth the land, and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it. Interesting. Exactly what he said when they got off the boat, remember? Man's blood is shed by a man, his blood shall be shed. Let's see here. Verse number 34. Defile not therefore the land, which ye shall inhabit wherein I dwell, for I, the Lord, dwell among the children of Israel. So some things here that he points out, he says there are some words and phrases that the Bible student might need to look up. And these are revenger of blood. In verse 19, laying of weight in verse 20, enmity, verse 21, City of Refuge in verse 25 says once you have learned the definition of these, it is time to list the lessons from this passage. So first of all, I didn't really spend any time to explain those words necessarily, although we described it and we went through the passage. I believe the passage defines the words pretty well. So anybody want to tell us what a revenger of blood is? Yeah, the the the revenger of blood is the person who revenges the blood of the one that was slain kills and takes the life of the murderer All right lying of weight Right Right. Well, there's multiple. I mean, it can be good or bad either way. You know, lying of weight. You know, it's generally you're talking about you're trying to get somebody and you might be trying to get somebody because you're bad or you might be trying to get somebody because they're bad. Ambush. There you go. That's that's a perfect synonymous term. Okay, now we have enmity. Enmity. I'd say it's a little stronger than that, but that's, enmity comes from the concept of being an enemy. And so enmity is, it is the, I'm trying to think of the best way to describe that. Well, enmity is the fact of enemies. It's basically, if I'm your enemy, then there is enmity between us. It's a grudge or a fact of our enemy. It's the fact of the... That wasn't Western, that was Southern. Kind of like a feud. Well, enmity is more... I think enmity, it's a little simpler. It's like, okay, you're my enemy, I'm your enemy, and therefore we have enmity with one another. It's basically the relationship that we have as enemies. That is the word I was looking for. Well, no, that is a relationship. It's a relationship of enemies. Relationship of enemies is enmity. That's that's the the concept I was looking for how to word that right? Okay, and the last one here, I think It's a city of refuge Safehouse where you go to get away from the revenge of blood You use like a sanctuary city something like that that's that's a similar concept Okay, so we define these words now. We're gonna look at a a list of lessons from the passage, and there's probably more lessons and and so on. But but he gives the basic ones here. It says not all killing is murder. It is not murder to kill a person accidentally. We see in in verses 22 and 23, if it was accidental, it's not murder. The case is to be tried to determine the cause of death. Remember, verse 24 says that they shall judge between a slayer and the revenger of blood. So there's a there's a case going to take place. It's not just, you know, not just a free for all, you know, uh, you know, where where something happens by accident. And then all of a sudden, the next thing you know, this other guy's killing this other guy because he accidentally killed a family member of his. It's there. There has to be a You know, and that's where some of logic comes in. If someone kills a family member of yours by accident, it was unintentional, they don't necessarily deserve to die because of it. In fact, they don't necessarily deserve to be hated because of it either. It was an accident. Well, we throw people in jail for the rest of their lives sometimes. when someone accidentally kills someone else. And yeah, they call it manslaughter. Uh, different than justifiable homicide, which would be someone's trying to kill you and you're defending yourself or someone's trying to kill your family and you're defending your family and they die in the process. That's justifiable homicide and there's no time served for that. Um, and then there's a manslaughter and then there's first, second, third degree. Um, which basically defines the degree in which you are responsible for the death of that person. So you have negligence, you have impairment, and there's multiple different things that can contribute to your responsibility or lack of responsibility concerning the death of that person. And there's some things that it's it's got to be judged based on the character of the person based on their knowledge ability of certain things. You know, some people may be more responsible for some things than other people would be. For example, if you work in a factory and you've been trained on the machinery and you're training someone else and you should know better, you have no ill intent toward them. You don't want them to die or anything. but there's a certain safety precaution that you didn't share with them, either because you forgot or whatever, you're still held more responsible than the other new guy that came in with them that doesn't really know the machinery very well. Does that make sense? So that's where it would be something happened by accident. There's some other examples, and I don't know if we're going to get into those, but if you've got an axe, and you're using it to chop a tree down and the axe head flies off and hits somebody and kills them. Accident. Things do happen like that. Very, very unfortunate accident. Very precise unfortunate accident, but yes, sir. That's why you have a jury. The judge makes the sentence. He did. He set up 70, the Sanhedrin. Yeah. So the elders would make that decision. In fact, here it says the congregation shall deliver the slayer. And then it says that the congregation shall judge. And the congregation as a whole would judge based on the representative elders that they would put in place. But yeah, so you The axe head flies off and it hits the guy that was pushing on the tree, okay? Alright, because you're trying to cut the tree down and make it fall that way, and this guy's holding it like this, and you go, you know, you go to swing, and when you go to swing, the head flies off and hits him right in the head and gone. Yeah, they'd sue the guy that made the axe, but in those days you made your own axes. What's that? Now, the family may still say, you know, did you do something wrong when you made the axe or whatever? But the fact of the matter is, if the axe head never came off the axe before that point, there's no way to know. It just happened. It was an accident. If the axe head came off before that point, and they knew, what's that? The handle slipped out. Yeah, that wouldn't be good either. But there's a lot of circumstances. But if they knew that the axe head would commonly come off, then now there's negligence. Now, if they knew that it commonly came off, and they told the guy, hey, sometimes this axe head comes off, you need to watch yourself. Make sure that you're not within the swing of my axe. And then the guy gets in the way, then that was his problem, not the axer, the axe swinger. We're talking about, you know, back in the day, all right? There's other examples, too, though, when you talk about animals. Sometimes animals kill people. In fact, there's a passage that talks about an ox, and I don't know if we're going to look at that or not. Probably not. Patches talks about you know if you have an ox that you loan to someone and and this ox kills them So basically if you're I'm giving it in you know paraphrase, but basically if you didn't know that the ox was a vicious beast and you know and deadly creature that wanted to kill someone or That was known to do such things then If you didn't know it's it was an accident, but it says if the ox was known to push is what it says and in times past. If the ox was known to push in times past, in other words, if he was aggressive before and you loan it to the other guy, you didn't tell him anything about it. You're like, yeah, use my ox. Go for it. And then the ox gores the man. Now you're responsible for his death because of negligence because you didn't tell him. So that's the concept. And I'm surprised that he didn't really deal with that. Right, because they're putting themselves in front of animals that are going to kill them. So anyways, the case has to be tried. The next one here says in Israel, the revenger of blood had authority to kill the murderer. This was a relative or friend of the person who was killed. And it speaks of the revenger of blood there. Then the next one here says there was a place of safety for the one who killed accidentally. That was the city of refuge. All right. And then murder is to be punished by taking the murderer's life. Verse 30 tells us that if it was murder, death penalty, not life in prison, death penalty. That would solve quite a few problems with our system. If there's murder, it's proven. Again, it has to be proven, but it's proven. First of all, if you knew that you were going to be, that your life was going to be taken if it was proven that you killed somebody, you would probably be a little more hesitant to kill someone, yes. Well, they would have things like that, I would say. Imprisonment. What's that? I mean, just have a secure house. By the time, I mean, just a few hundred years later, you have the prisons that Paul was in and so on. But I don't think they really exercised imprisonment. That's the thing. Rome did not exercise the law as God Gave it to Israel and so they would imprison people for a lot of things Put them on a ship. Yeah But and then but then the other thing is they would arrest them for things that You know aren't really crimes, you know, or maybe they are crimes but they're Like maybe there's a tour, you know, like where you've done something against someone. And so they arrest you for that instead of make you make restitution and see. And the Bible gives a. Recipe for restitution says what to do if you stole from someone, you have to restore them. And it gives a specific, you know, specific recipe for or step steps on how you restore the person you stole from. It also gives steps on how to restore. If you borrowed something from someone and it broke, uh, depends on how it broke. If you, um, if you, you know, destroy something of someone else's, there are specific ways in which you restore or make restitution in that matter. Um, some sins can have restitution, others, their sins unto death. And in this case, murder was a sin unto death. So it says, again, two witnesses were required. No other punishment was allowed. Notice in verse 31, it says that there's no satisfaction for the life of a murderer, which is guilty of death. But he shall surely be put to death or he shall be surely put to death No other option in fact in verse Verse 33 it says so shall not or so you shall not pollute the land Wherein you are For blood for blood it defiled the land and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein but by the blood of him that shed it. The only way that that that you know that there's there's there's only one way to solve that problem, and that is the life of the murderer. Um, it goes on, says, Well, and he kind of uses some other, uh, phrase here to describe what I just said there. But he says murder is a very serious crime, and it pollutes the land. So he gives some more examples here of other passages. We see Matthew chapter five verses 18 through 20. And then we have. You're talking about, you know, how murder comes from the heart, and he gives that as an or as the lesson that we learn, murder is a problem of the sinful heart is not a problem caused by his environment or poverty or whatever. It's from a sinful heart. And even if somebody says, well, I had to kill him because I needed what he had, because if I didn't take that food that he had, I would die of starvation. So I had to kill him. That's not justifiable homicide. That is murder. And it's not because of your poverty. It's because of your wicked heart that felt like it was OK to take something that belonged to someone else and take their life in the process. We have Romans 13, one through four. Speaking of authority here again, he says, if you don't, if there's a word or a term or whatever that you don't understand, look it up. And then we have a major lesson, and that is that God has given the authority to civil governments to put evil doers to death. So There was a little bit of a tweak. We changed from the revenger of blood to now the civil authority has that responsibility. OK, so that's that's where the little tweak changed when God was dealing with Israel and you had the theocracy and all that. He did it that way. And now that he's dealing with all men, not that he wasn't dealing with all men then, All men were still responsible to answer to God, but he chose Israel to give them his law. And so he dealt with them in that way. Now that it's the time of the Gentiles, the age of grace, we have we have to answer to civil authority and civil governments have the authority now by God to execute judgment upon evildoers. So next one here, step four, organize and summarize the lessons. So basically what he's done is he's taken some of the lessons that were throughout the different passages, and then he's put them in kind of like an outline format. So Bible lessons about murder and killing. He mentions first that murder is a horrible crime. The Bible says that the man who takes the life is to forfeit his own. As we saw when they got off the ark, that's what he said that was going to happen. Killing and murder are not always the same. There are at least three occasions in the Bible when killing is not murder. That is accidental death. It is not murder to kill someone accidentally. Self-defense, it is not murder to defend oneself, one's loved ones and one's property. Capital punishment is not murder. It is not murder to put criminals to death for heinous crimes. And by the way, capital punishment in the Bible was not just for murder. If you committed adultery and you were caught in the act of committing adultery, uh, it was death sentence. Uh, and I know, you know, people bring it. Well, what about the woman that was caught in adultery? And Jesus said, you know, those among you are without sin cast the first stone. He wasn't saying that that law no longer applies. They brought one party of the crime If she was caught in the act of adultery, where's the guy? Bible says they both of them shall be put to death, both of them. They brought one. They were trying to trip him up. It says at the very beginning of that passage that they came trying to, I'm not quoting it, but they came trying to trip him up. They were trying to get him tripped up in his words so that they could prove that he was not the Messiah. Why they didn't bring him? He probably was there. I think that had a little bit to do with why he said what he said and what he did with his finger on the ground. We don't know because it doesn't say what he did with his finger on the ground. But I think probably this woman that was caught in adultery was probably involved with more than one of the guys that were there that brought her there. They were mad at her, brought her there, and said, Hey, two birds with one stone. Get rid of her. Catch him in, you know, in misapplying the law. And it didn't work out too well for him because he had the right answer. So and then on top of that, you also had the Roman law where remember when Paul stood before the Roman magistrate there And he says that our law does not allow anyone to be put to death before he is heard before our courts, basically. Well, if Jesus would have said, yep, guilty stoner. Then he would be bucking against Roman authority, and then they could have said, hey, Romans, this guy said he had authority to have this person executed, had her executed, didn't come to you. And now he's in trouble with the Romans. So either way he went with that, whether he said do it or don't do it. Then he could have been in trouble with somebody. And so his his answering back was his answer back to them was a great answer. You know, stoop down on the ground and. I think I can't prove it, but I think he wrote names. Of the men that were involved with this woman. Or maybe he just wrote the the Ten Commandments. I don't know. Or maybe he drew a smiley face. Probably not. It says he wrote on the ground. So, you know, we don't know what he wrote, but they do. And whatever it was, he said he that is without sin cast the first stone, it says he stooped down. And wrote on the ground. And they all started leaving. I mean, the fact that he said, he that is without sin cast the first stone, I don't think that that's enough to just have them leave. It had to have something to do with what he was writing on the ground. And they all left. So, but the penalty, maybe, yeah, the penalty, maybe all their names, maybe they were all involved with it. Or maybe they all were guilty of the same crime. And maybe he was writing down the names of the women that they were involved with. And then they all were like, oh, yep, see you later. But anyways, what I was pointing out there is that the death penalty applies to more than just murder. In the Old Testament, we have murder, we have adultery rape What's that? Drunkenness well to a degree drunkenness with the immorality involved. Yeah. Oh Yeah, yeah rebellion against your parents death penalty Yeah, yeah says if they can't can't get him under control, bring him before the city. And then they accused him of all kinds of stuff, right? He's a drunkard and a and a bunch of stuff. Yeah. So anyways. And then then the the rebellious child is put to death. Mm hmm. Yeah. I'll tell you what, it keeps some people in line, wouldn't it? I mean, if you knew that if you're if you as a kid knew growing up that the worst thing that could happen to you for disobeying was not getting a spanking, it was getting rocked to sleep with real rocks. You'd probably shape up, you know. Mom says, hey, son, you don't you don't quit acting up. I'm going to take you out to the gates of the city and present you to the elders of the city. And you're going to be it's going to be done. No, that's one rock collection you don't want. Amen. Yes, sir. Would murder be OK? Murder's never OK. Would it be OK if the group was more nebulous? Yeah. You know what? He doesn't even really address that here. So I guess we could add the fourth reason, or the fourth the fourth justifiable homicide, so to speak, would be it in war. That's a good good thing to bring up, because you find throughout the throughout the Old Testament, throughout the Bible, he's moving. You find that that that he gives us, you know, example after example of going to battle. And, you know, so now, you know, friendly fire that's accidental is different than friendly fire that's on purpose. Remember with David and Uriah, He had Uriah killed. That was purposeful. He actually used the hands of the enemy to kill someone on purpose. That was murder, even though he didn't personally kill the person. And it's interesting here that that's where we see the first, not the first, but one of the first double standards for political power versus the common folk, you know. If if if my name's Clinton, I could have anybody killed and not have to answer to it. But if I do it myself now, I have to answer to it. I'm not saying that that's scripturally OK. I do believe God forgave David, but I think it's interesting. What's that? He reaped the consequences. Oh, did he reap those consequences? I mean, it tore his family apart. The kingdom was taken from him two generations later. You know, he had Judah, and that was it. not David, but his grandson ruled Judah. And that was it. And that was, I believe, a combination of David and Solomon, although the Lord specifically said that it was judgment for Solomon's sin when he when his heart was taken away from God by all the women that he had in his life. But but we find anyways this, you know, that example, then number three here, he says the avenger of death. in Old Testament times was a relative or friend who put the murder to death. Today it is the government who puts the murder to death. Romans 13. Not the church. Church discipline never involves corporal or capital punishment. Corporal punishment is, you know, a weapon. You know, although that's where Rome and her daughters, Catholic, Protestant, you know, all of those guys all had a wrong view of the church and the state. They put them together and they felt that, oh, you know, we can have our own executioners and we can, you know, execute for false doctrine or for whatever. Um, And so they tried to keep things together. And they said, oh, you know, God replaced Israel with the Roman Catholic Church. And that's not right. That's not true. Murder defiles the land and requires capital punishment. Number four here, number five murder is a problem of the heart. And so he gives a conclusion. Number one, topical study is the best method to find the mind of God on any subject. And I would say that, again, when you're studying a topic, Also, make sure that you study the context. I think he's going to walk. Hey, let him walk. He'll be great. So I would say topical study is very good, very important to do. When you topically study, there is a danger, though, of taking things out of context because it fits with your topical study. You must be careful to maintain the context of the passages you're looking at. But he says here it's the best method to find the mind of God on any subject. Number two, he says that topical study is only helpful for studying larger topics of the Bible, but also not only, I'm sorry, not only helpful for studying larger topics of the Bible, but also for smaller ones Number three says the topical study method is a very helpful or is also very helpful if you need to check out a certain teaching. So something maybe you hear me say or some other preacher, you want to check it out, go through the Bible on that topic. Study to see if those things are so. Then he gives us home study projects as you can choose a subject. that you please or that you would like from the Bible and follow these guidelines in studying it. Next week, Lord willing, we will begin on studying the books of the Bible.