When you think about what a society, a community is going to need in order to be for the best interests of its citizens, knowing that there are crimes and sins in a fallen world, you might say, well, in its most basic sense, you would want authorities to punish the wrong and to defend the innocent. You would think those two things, this pairing together, would be toward the pursuit of a just society. That there are wrongdoers that need to be deterred from their activity because maybe they have committed evil and would commit even more. And so some sort of punishment or restraint is necessary in God's common grace. You might even imagine wrongdoing desired in the heart, but not yet committed because of fear of repercussion and consequence. So the idea of deterring wrongdoing, either from it beginning or from it continuing, and then pairing that with protecting and defending the innocent, would surely go together as a pair of concerns for a healthy community. And according to the Ten Commandments, our treatment of neighbor, and especially the Sixth Commandment, you shall not murder, would seem to fit along the idea of pursuing justice together and being thoughtful of one's treatment of an image bearer. Punishing wrongdoers and therefore trying to deal with the act of murdering, and also protecting the innocent. That there would be unlawful taking of life, we would not want that, that would be unjust. The Bible is concerned about all of these things. The Bible in the book of Deuteronomy is concerned that Israel embody these things in fact. It's part of God's moral law. It's part of his moral law that in their treatment of image bearers that they pursue in some way a means of punishment on the wrongdoer and that they would then defend or in some way seek to vindicate the innocent. Let's think of the passage tonight, beginning in chapter 19, and it will extend part of the way through chapter 22, as a series of sections that expand on or seek to apply the fifth commandment as a principle. I'm sorry, the sixth commandment as a principle. In the sixth commandment, you shall not murder. But what do we do when people are killed? And how should we think about the loss of life? Chapters 19, 20, and even through part of 22, are going to expand on that idea. I'm using this language of expanding on or building on the sixth commandment principle because previously we've seen a series of offices in Israel's community that seem to build on the fifth principle, the fifth commandment. You shall honor your father and your mother. Honor your father and your mother is expanded in the civil and corporate realm of Israel's life to include spiritual fathers and leaders. So you have like in Deuteronomy 16, judges. Deuteronomy 17, kings. Deuteronomy 18, priests and prophets. People that in some way guided, instructed, and fed spiritually the people. So yes, that's not the same as a household parent, but it's like spiritual leaders and fathers for the Israelites in the nation beyond the household. What you can imagine tonight starting out then, in chapter 19, is that this is a concern of where the sixth commandment can be extended and applied. And it has to do with this commandment saying, you shall not murder, but what about when life is taken? And can we distinguish between unintentional taking of life, and the premeditated murder of an image-bearer. Does the Bible recognize those distinctions? What we need tonight is to see in verses 1 to 3 a call to establish something we've noticed before. This is not the first time we're going to see the notion of cities of refuge. Maybe this rings a bell because way back in Deuteronomy 4, we talked about it. That's been some time, I recognize. That's like 2023, maybe, near the end of that year. And here we are in July of 2024. But the cities of refuge were mentioned very briefly in Deuteronomy 4. They were mentioned in Numbers 35 for the first time. And they're going to be mentioned in Joshua 20 in terms of fulfillment in the land. Cities of refuge. A city of refuge is a designated appointed place for manslayers to go. Someone who is innocent of murder, but whose actions unwittingly resulted in the loss of life. And this whole judicial proceeding needs to be worked out. What are we going to do with this person? A city of refuge was designated for them to flee to. So you could find asylum or sanctuary in a place designated as a city of refuge and there are six of them that the Old Testament names. There were three of them that were established on the eastern side of the Jordan River because Israel's community is first there right before they cross over. They're on the eastern side and three cities are established. But three more cities are going to be established in the promised land. They're not all close together. They're spread out in the land. So here's what he says in verses 1 to 3 as he calls for particular cities to be established. When the Lord your God cuts off the nations whose land the Lord your God is giving you, and you dispossess them and dwell in their cities and in their houses, you shall set apart three cities for yourselves in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess. Three cities already on the eastern side of the river. We're talking now about the conquest, the taking of the land, the dispossessing of the nations. There will be three cities in the land of Canaan that will also be set apart. And they will be set apart in the following way in verse 3. You're going to measure the distances, divide into three parts the areas of the land that the Lord your God gives you as a possession so that any manslayer can flee to them. The concern seems to be wherever somebody might live in the promised land, they have access to some kind of sanctuary. And I don't mean a worship sanctuary, I mean a place of safety. A place where they will be kept protected and where someone with a vengeful, hot-blooded mind isn't going to prevail upon them. It's understood to be a city of refuge from someone who might retaliate. Or someone might think, oh you did it, I know that you're guilty. when really the facts are going to bear a much more complicated situation when it's all said and done. So the city of refuge is being described here, even though it's not called that in a phrase. These are the cities. These cities of refuge. When you read Joshua, they enter the land, Joshua 20 actually tells you that they're setting up these cities. And so you're gonna see some fulfillment earlier. Now, what's the purpose? Well, we've looked at that just a bit as I've gotten ahead of myself intentionally. But in verses four to seven, the purpose of these cities is laid out a little more. In verses four to seven, this is a law or principle of asylum. This is the provision for the manslayer. The manslayer is a term distinct from a murderer. In each case, loss of life has happened. But what's behind that loss of life is not identical. In the murderer's case, there's premeditation. It's homicide through and through. In the case of the manslayer, that's another name for what we might call the event of a situation of manslaughter. A life has been lost. But it wasn't a premeditated situation driven by hatred, animosity, and planning and all the rest. This is a manslayer situation here in verse 4. This is the provision. These cities are for the future situations of manslaughter. Let's just recognize together they're going into a promised land with this in their minds as the potential kind of thing they have to deal with. This land is promised to them, but it's not going to be free of unrighteousness and just pure through and through without any problems. They're going to have to deal within their own covenant community when someone's life is taken unintentionally. And so this provision for the manslayer is so that he can flee there and save his life. Save his life from whom? He's not fleeing from the authorities. He's being located at a designated place so that authorities and judicial proceedings can explore the case lest someone hastily take vengeance on him. So when it says he may save his life, what he means is save his life from someone who's just acting out of vengeance. Someone who's got a response and an opportunity to say, I'm just going to go ahead and rectify this right now. Instead, they want to make sure that this is a thoroughly investigated situation. And the scenario that he paints in his sermon here in verse four is just one example of many hypothetical scenarios. We would call the kind of thing in verses four and five, something like a freak accident, wouldn't we? Something where here you have two people and they entered the woods and one's cutting with an ax. and then a horrific thing takes place. The head of the axe comes off, it strikes the friend that is there. None of this was premeditated, it's a horrific turn of events. And this tragedy, sometimes called a freak accident in our language, is the thing that results in the death of this friend. So there they are in the forest, and the axe is swung, and the head of the axe slips from the handle, strikes the neighbor. What it means is, if you're the one holding that axe, you've got a place to go to. because you're gonna come out of those woods and you're not coming along with your companion. You're coming out and your companion is dead, and he's dead as a result of you swinging that ax, but it's also more complicated, right? You didn't swing that ax at him to kill him. That's not what that is. And so you have a place to go. You have three cities in the promised land west of the Jordan River. You have three cities east of the Jordan River, and the land is to divide out in such a way that you have access to such refuge. It is so that in verse six, lest the avenger of blood and hot anger pursue the manslayer and overtake him because the way is long. So they want these cities spread out so that the access is easy and someone is not delayed in getting to a place of refuge. Because the longer the distance somebody would have to cross, the more likely it might be that they might not make it in time because somebody's pursuing them as an avenger of blood. Avenger of blood. This phrase was used earlier in the Pentateuch and an avenger of blood in this context in the ancient Near East likely referred to a family member who had been authorized in some sort of judicial or legal proceeding to take the life of a murderer. And you don't want an avenger of blood on the trail of someone who unintentionally took the life of another because in the Torah's prescriptions and punishments, if you murder someone, then your blood will be shed by man in return. And it is to demonstrate through that capital punishment, that execution of your life, that the value of the life taken was so high as an image bearer, that your very life will now be demanded in return. And so in verse 6, you have this city so that the avenger of blood won't just pursue the manslayer and overtake him. The person who's the manslayer can have refuge, even though the way might be long at other places, he would have a city nearer to him to go to. Because the man didn't deserve to die, since he had not hated his neighbor in the past. He's saying, imagine a situation where you didn't go into the woods in your neighbor thinking to yourself, I only hope one of us comes out of this. You know, like, you don't hate this guy. You're not coming in there with animosity. You're not planning this. Because we might recognize that premeditated murder would certainly have entangled with it emotions of hostility, anger, something that is boiling within that would lead to murder. Jesus seems to make this very connection in the Sermon on the Mount, when in Matthew chapter five, he says, you've heard it said, you shall not murder. I say to you, you should not even hate your brother, right? Don't even hate your brother. If you've hated your brother, you find yourself in violation of the sixth commandment, because the core of the sixth commandment is aiming at your heart toward your neighbor. Yeah, most extremely, you might take the life of your neighbor, but that kind of premeditated activity is sourced in your wrong heart. And so Jesus is concerned about that for his people, and he wants the disciples to think about their heart toward their neighbor. And he says here in Deuteronomy 19, 6, this manslayer doesn't deserve to die. So here you have the Bible making distinctions in these two hypothetical cases, someone who's maybe seeking to murder someone, and then an unintentional killing. The penalty is not the same in both cases, is it? The intent matters, or the lack of intent in the case of the manslayer. He had not hated his neighbor in the past, therefore I command you, you shall set apart these three cities. All right, so we've seen the call to set apart these cities in verses one to three. A bit more about their purpose in verses four to seven. It's possible that as Israelites are fruitful and multiply, and even their land borders expand should the Lord grant more dominion, they might need more cities. Let's just imagine an ever expanding and growing populace. And you say, well, wait a second, three in the promised land. Yeah, that was good at first. In the 1400s BC, when we entered the land under Joshua's leadership, maybe hundreds of years later, they'll need even more. So you have the potential for more cities in verses 8 to 10. If the Lord your God enlarges your territory, as he has sworn to your fathers and gives you all the land that he promised to give to your fathers, provided you're careful to keep this commandment, which I command you today, by loving the Lord your God and by walking ever in his ways, then you shall add three other cities to these three. This would, now we're just thinking mathematically here, we've got three on the eastern side of the Jordan River, now three in the promised land, and a potential three down the road. That would make it not any longer six, but nine. And so he's saying you're going to be looking at as many as nine cities. Should the Lord bless your people, should your obedience to the Lord continue and you delight in his law and you keep his commandments, the Lord will bless you, give you dominion, enlarge your territory, and in that you will add more cities. Why? Verse 10, lest innocent blood be shed in your land. The concern is that people who are innocent don't have their blood shed. He doesn't want that. That would be an egregious act upon an image bearer to shed the blood of someone unlawfully. So innocent blood is not a statement about someone's sinful nature or sinless nature. Innocent blood is a way of saying someone's life is taken unlawfully. It ought not to have been done. He says, so you're going to have these cities so that we can make sure should continued things like unintentional killings take place, which can happen in a fallen world, that the manslayer's innocent blood isn't shed. The land that the Lord, your God is giving you is your inheritance in verse 10. And this is less than innocent blood be shed and that the guilt of bloodshed be upon you. Let's say they don't prepare for this. Let's say they don't take measures to ensure that the innocent are protected. He says here at the end of verse 10, the guilt of bloodshed would be upon you. He would consider it disobedient among the covenant community there if they don't value the lives of the innocent in the way that they say, we don't want this to be shed. They're not to be neutral in other words. They're to defend the vulnerable and the innocent. They're to want the wrongdoer to face justice and they're to want those who've been treated unjustly or pursued by the wrongdoer to be vindicated and protected. This means that here in the Old Testament community, you have the same kind of moral law operating that you have in the New Testament chapter of Romans 13 about the role of governing authorities to deter evil. This is needful in a fallen world. We would love to be in a world where there is no evil, no wickedness, and nothing needs to be regulated. The innocent don't need to be offended, and wrongdoers don't need to be punished. We live in a world where evil and wickedness seeks to commit more wickedness, get away with it, and even use various authorities and systems to cover their ordeals. We know that it's tragic that in a fallen world, it can be the case that vulnerable and innocent people aren't protected. and that people who are wicked and guilty get away with things. So it seems at the time. And so the Old Testament is concerned about this. And the Israelites are to live in such a way in the promised land where they want the guilty to be punished and the innocent to be protected. In verses 11 to 13, there's a procedure though for handling murderers. Let's say someone committed homicide. The city of refuge is not for them. They don't get to live there. They don't get to be protected in their criminality. In verses 11 to 13, here's the procedure for handling murderers. Pause. What's being identified there is the inward animosity. He hates his neighbor. This person's heart is already wrong toward his neighbor and so a wrong treatment of his neighbor would inevitably follow at some point. His heart toward him is already distorted. He hates his neighbor and he lies in wait. What's he lying in wait to do? Attacks him and strikes him fatally so that he dies. That was his plan. His plan was to prevail upon the unsuspecting neighbor and to take the life of his neighbor. And if he flees into one of those cities, it says in verse 12, then the elders of his city shall send and take him from there. We would call this a process of extradition, right? So you have this person who has fled to a city of refuge. A city of refuge is not for him. He's guilty. It has been determined that he is such. Maybe there were witnesses and other extenuating factors that have already been taken into account. But the elders in the original city go to the city of refuge to take him. These are representatives of the villager city's interest that the man is originally from. In fact, they are in a locale where a murder has taken place. This is not manslaughter, this is homicide. And therefore, because a homicide has taken place, the representatives of the city care about that. It actually, it matters to them. Am I my brother's keeper? Yes, like it matters to me that in my local situation here, murder has taken place and that person has fled, we want the righting of the wrong. We want a restoration. We want some kind of right and just retribution in a sense that doesn't exceed proportional justice, but that does pursue justice. And so in verse 12, we imagine here that these elders of that murderer city, they show up at the city of refuge and they come to take him and they hand him over. Look at the language at the end of verse 12. They hand him over to the avenger of blood so that he may die. That is execution. So because the murderer has intentionally taken the life of an innocent person, that unlawful activity, that unjust taking of human life results in the forfeiture of that murderer's life. The murderer has forfeited his own right to live because he has prevailed upon innocent blood, shed that innocent blood, and not just the family of the deceased would be worried about this. The elders of the city are involved. They have some sort of judicial or legal role that they are playing. Now earlier in Deuteronomy chapter 16 and 17, we talked about judges of a city, legal representatives, which may overlap with these elders, trusted people of established credibility that have some kind of influence and involvement on the affairs. And they're involved and they walk back home with the murderer and they hand him over to the avenger of blood so that he may die. Verse 13 is strong. Verse 13 says, your eye shall not pity him, but you shall purge the guilt of innocent blood from Israel so that it may be well with you. So they have a vested interest socially, spiritually, of it going well for them, for them to then address these egregious acts of injustice. And they may be tempted to say, well, Maybe we'll, in some sort of other thing, overcome and even become decisive for what would end up being an unjust result, where evil behavior would be ignored or punishment minimized to such a degree that it makes no logical sense. And you think, well, if evildoers are only gonna be punished as such, then surely this will incentivize more evildoing, not less. Your eye shall not pity him, he says. Because we can imagine the normal human emotion, especially if you know the person. Or if you thought, well, my neighbor always seemed like a nice and upstanding person. I'm not sure what my testimony would be that I should pity and have this compassion. What might be some reasons human societies fail to punish evil behavior? Because this seems to be what is being brought up in verse 13, your eye shall not pity him. I think he's saying the avenger of blood shall put him to death, your eye shall not pity him. You shouldn't look at this and say, I know he murdered the guy, but let's not, you know, let's not go through with that. And you know, you could, you could give her the reasons he, he doesn't offer that here, does he? In verse 13, he says, your eye shall not pity him. but you shall purge the guilt of innocent blood. Innocent blood has been shed that has incurred a guilt or a defilement in the land. And he thinks it is incumbent upon this covenant community to address that, not to ignore that, not to sweep that under the rug, but to confront it head on so that it may be well with you. more than an individual's sense of compassion or pity needs to be the larger concern of it going well with all. Is this going to be best for all? Because no doubt, for the murderer's sake, he might have friends or family that are like, I don't want to see this person put to death. And yet, is that set of isolated pity and compassion, is that to become the principle by which justice is conducted or not? Surely there must be larger societal concerns that aren't overturned by an individual, or maybe let's say a rich person's influence, or a powerful person behind the scene pulling strings, where someone who's a murderer in one case might get this punishment, but someone who's a murderer in the other case seems to get off nearly with no lasting consequence. He says, your eye shall not pity him. Because when human society fails to punish evil behavior, there are a few reasons for this. I just want to think about five of them. The list could be longer maybe, but here are five. When human societies fail to punish evil, it could be due to one of the following five things. First of all, it could be because the society no longer cares about wrongdoing. They simply don't care. They become numb to it, desensitized to it. Their conscience is calcified, as you might say, culturally, collectively. They simply don't care about wrongdoing. Number two, They enjoy some incentive to overlook it. So if a society is not punishing wrongdoing, what's in their interest to overlook it? What might they be gaining or maintaining or increasing that overlooking that wrongdoing is going to give them? So not caring about wrongdoing or enjoying some incentive to overlook it. Number three, what about just delighting in evil? Maybe it's not just that they don't care about wrongdoing anymore. They actually commit to it. Their indulgence in love is for evil. Wickedness is their delight. This is what they want. Their desires are actually ordered toward and oriented toward wickedness. Number four, a society might fail to punish evil behavior if they're so seared as to be unable to identify it. They wouldn't recognize it if it bit them in the leg. They wouldn't be able to identify it because their moral compass is so skewed they can't identify evil to oppose it. And perhaps connected to this, number five, a society might fail to punish evil behavior because they consider what's evil to actually be good. So their moral compass is so skewed, not only because they might not care about it, not only because they might be unable to identify it, they actually call what's good evil and evil good. So these are the sort of things that could be animating cultures and societies in a fallen world where society is not addressing evil and protecting the innocent. The wicked are not held to account and the vulnerable are not defended. Now, what we know is that if the manslayer, this is not mentioned in Deuteronomy 19, by the way, so open parenthesis for a moment. You'd have to go back to Numbers 35 for this, okay, close parenthesis. If you are a manslayer going to one of these cities and you are vindicated, not only are you not put to death, you are able to stay in that city of refuge protected from any avenger of blood from that point forward. You can live in that city of refuge. But you can't ever leave it, unless the high priest dies. According to Numbers 35, the city of refuge, it's not like a prison, but it is your new vicinity, it is your new home, and it's an understood place where an avenger of blood is not to go and pursue some sort of vendetta. In fact, in Numbers 35, if you ignore the law of God about this, and the instruction from Moses, and you leave the city of refuge, if the avenger of blood prevails upon you, so be it. So it's in your best interest if you know you are innocent and the judicial proceedings have vindicated your claims, the city of refuge is your place unless the high priest dies. And if the high priest dies, it's as if his death is in your place and you are set free. And if you were not condemned to death, you were gonna live in a different place, but you are released from the city of refuge according to Numbers 35 at the death of the high priest. Now there's more here about the land in verse 14. And at first, verse 14 doesn't exactly seem related to what we've just looked at. Like, my translation in the ESV has a little heading there separating verse 13 and 14, and then separating 14 from the next paragraph, okay? And verse 14 is just like, out there, it's floating in the water, you know, all by itself. It's just an island of a verse. Now of course that's not exactly true because he's concerned about the proper treatment of neighbor and he's concerned about things in the land going correctly and not only is the right treatment of neighbor and the rightful coordination of things in the land like these cities of refuge to be on their to-do list. Boundaries in this land and for the sake of their neighbor are to be maintained because they're given by the Lord. So he says in verse 14, you shall not move your neighbor's landmark, which the men of old have set, and the inheritance that you will hold in the land the Lord your God's giving you to possess. you would have tribes not having equal territory among the 12. If you go to the book of, not the book of maps, if you go to the maps at the end of your Bible, maybe there's a book of maps somewhere, we call it an atlas, but here you have the Bible maps at the end. If you go to the color-coded maps, you will see that the inherited territories are not all the same proportions. And so when you have boundaries and lines that are set from tribe to tribe, That is not to be moved at human ingenuity. And also, within the tribe, a lot of territory, you would have family markers and boundaries and places where you might use language like this. This is my property line. Okay, so we think of language like that. Here's where my property line starts. And it goes back this far. And you can imagine, hypothetically, the difficulty if property lines become a matter of dispute. And the resentment and frustration that can result within neighbors. In fact, you can imagine the sort of thing of disputes with covetousness, greed, and anger that somebody's blood might end up getting shed. I think one way to connect verse 14 to what we've just read is that they want to avoid any possible cases of animosity and hatred toward your neighbor starting out. What's one of the things that is absolutely gonna provoke your neighbor if you and your greed start moving your boundary line because you just want more property? And that's not gonna help you and your neighbor. And what's gonna be down the road from that? Maybe not just increasing animosity, maybe it's gonna escalate far beyond what you anticipated. So I think verse 14 actually is connected thematically to what we've been talking about. It's not meant to be an island verse out there. You shall not move your neighbor's landmark. Now why would you do that? Why would you move your neighbor's landmark? So that you can have more land. That's why you'd move it. You would move it because you want something you don't have, and they have it. So it's covetousness. You might say this violates the eighth commandment. You shall not steal. So not only should you not murder your neighbor, you shouldn't steal from your neighbor. And in verse 14 here, moving your neighbor's landmark would not only be a sin against your neighbor, who has given, and a lot of these territories anyway, ultimately the Lord. So let's just follow it through logically. Not only is this committing wrongdoing against your neighbor, it's certainly dishonorable to the Lord, who in His sovereignty and in His promise keeping steadfast love has a lot of territories for these people to have tribe by tribe, these inheritance territories, but also within these tribes, all the various households and places. These property lines, these landmarks, have been set up by the men of old in the inheritance that you'll hold in the land the Lord your God is giving you to possess. This is such a big deal that later Bible passages talk about this same command. In Deuteronomy 27, in the curses that would fall upon the people, the language in Deuteronomy 27, verse 17, cursed be anyone who moves his neighbor's landmark. Wow, that's in the curse section of Deuteronomy 27. You see this in Proverbs chapter 23. And in verse 10, just to give you an example there, Proverbs 23.10 says, Do not move an ancient landmark or enter the fields of the fatherless, for their Redeemer is strong. He'll plead their cause against you. You see, if you thought you could get away from it, get away with it, not from it, but if you thought you could get away with it, maybe you could cleverly devise something to slowly move a landmark. and maybe the other person would be unsuspecting. Maybe you're stronger and quicker and this person is older and less focused and aware and you have sort of prevailed or exploited this relationship and you have figured out a way for you to get from them without their knowing. The Bible doesn't want you to treat people that way. The Bible doesn't want you to think, what can I get at their expense unbeknownst to them? What can I get away with? Can I move this landmark? Can I increase my territory? He doesn't want that kind of greed and animosity to be going on in your heart that leads you to this kind of action. In fact, according to Deuteronomy 27, curse would be anyone who moves his neighbor's landmark. And if you think to yourself, but it's just the landmark. Now pause for a moment. Why would property be the kind of thing so emphasized in these kinds of laws? Why is that a big deal? Let's think of what we own as a kind of extension of our own person and identity. I don't mean in a core sense, but I mean when someone mistreats something that belongs to you, You're probably not indifferent to that. You might be offended and hurt. You might be frustrated. If someone takes something and it's just like, well, it's just this, it's not a person, it's just this property. But if someone were to deface and corrupt and break and destroy something that belonged to you, you would feel probably relationally offended and harmed. And that's why when we do something like hitting a golf ball through someone's window in a field, you might go to that neighbor then and say, listen, here's what I did. I know it's just a window, but I want us to be okay. So I want to apologize. I want to figure out how I can make this right. So we know instinctively that property is not just property, no connection at all to us. We recognize that what we own and what we've worked for and what we acquire is meaningful. So one of the ways we can be loving toward our neighbor is we respect, uphold, and value what belongs to our neighbor. And one of the ways we will sin against our neighbor is by defacing, moving what belongs to, in this case, like a landmark, what ought to be left alone. And therefore, Living with justice toward your neighbor means not murdering them, not stealing from them. And I would say even Deuteronomy 19 would want you to pay attention to your heart's attitude toward your neighbor because where does moving a landmark or murdering your neighbor after prevailing upon them and lying in wait, where does that come from? It comes from your heart that is failing to rightly love God and others. Then it leads to this other stuff. Now this manslayer, that flees to the city of refuge. You know, it's described here in chapter 19, and Numbers chapter 35 talked about it. Very briefly in Deuteronomy 4, these cities were mentioned. How does this connect to the covenant community now? How would we see our gospel life in Christ and our treatment of one another before the Lord? In light of a chapter such as this, where we haven't looked, though, at the whole chapter, but in the first 14 verses, we want to see that moral law is at play here. the proper and just treatment of another person and not exploiting them or taking advantage over them either by ending their life or moving their landmark. Neighbors are people to be loved, not people to be treated out of the result of our greed and murderous intent that's been boiling up with hatred and covetousness. And so that connects, doesn't it, with continuity into our present age. We might say, OK, well, we don't live in the land of Israel with these various tribal allotments. All right, fair enough. OK, that's different in that case. But we recognize what's being prohibited here. In principle, same kinds of concerns continue to exist. And if you think of these these judicial proceedings, you would recognize that even though the Christian community is not a civil state, but rather a multinational, multilingual, every tribe and tongue kind of thing around the world, a people of God scattered through the nations, This situation in Israel does lay out the importance of not acting out of a vendetta and vengeance, assuming something was done with a certain kind of intent when it might not have been. And it allows us to make distinctions that incorporate intent. intentional taking of a life versus an unintentional taking of a life have different penalties in their civil codes. There's a reason for that, and I think in a fallen world, it's incumbent upon all legal and justice systems to think that through. We don't want to treat, on the face of it, all things the same when we know that life is complicated, situations are complex, and we want to have enough reason and interest in truth and all the factors to make the best possible decision. but it is incumbent upon societies to protect the innocent and the vulnerable. to vindicate the innocent and to punish the wrongdoer. Because if those aren't interests that judicial and legal authorities have, then there will be huge repercussions within the citizenry of any culture. We know this is true. And it's not just true in the United States. We know this is true wherever there are people that need to have authorities caring for their best interests and defending the innocent and pursuing justice. We all know that when I'm going through parts of these chapters of Deuteronomy, we think about how Christ himself in some way connects to passages like this. And I was reminded in studying about Deuteronomy chapter 19, how numbers 35 made us think of Christ as our high priest who dies for the guilty. So what's interesting in light of this chapter, in the light of the gospel, is something like Hebrews 6. Because Hebrews 6 says that we have fled for refuge and might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. And this is about God's covenant in Christ. It's about his unchangeable purposes and his convincing showing of his promises for his heirs. Oh, Hebrews 6, 17 and 18 is gloriously thick with truth. And we are described as those who have fled for refuge. But I want you to know how Jesus is better than a city of refuge. Because the cities of refuge were for the innocent and Jesus is for the guilty. What's better news is that Jesus doesn't say, make sure you only flee to me for refuge as long as these things aren't true about you. Instead, Jesus receives those who have sinned, those who have transgressed, those who are guilty by the divine law itself. We would be those worthy of condemnation. Jesus is our refuge, not because you're trying to cover our guilt, but because we are saying he as the high priest has died for us. and that because of the death of the high priest, our hope and union with him means that his death covers our iniquity. So I need not die for my sins and to perish in them, though I deserve to. I'm not released from the penalty of my sins because upon further investigation, we've been found to be pure and innocent. Instead, Christ the high priest has died for the ungodly. And that's why, when you read Deuteronomy 19, in light of the full panorama of Scripture, there is better news to come. Because Christ is a refuge, and not just for an earthly lifetime. but eternal life for the sinner. As we love God and as we seek to love neighbor and as we seek to pursue right treatment of neighbor and to honor God with true worship, we do so knowing that Christ is our refuge. And by his Holy Spirit, he empowers us to love God and neighbor. Will you pray with me?