Joshua 20 | Episode #1249

July 30, 2026

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

Joshua 20

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for over 25 years. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word verse-by-verse and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

If you would like to revisit today’s Bible study, please visit our website at https://hopealive.buzzsprout.com/ to download the transcript. 

If this podcast ministered to you, please subscribe, and leave us a review. Reviews help us reach more people and spread the wisdom of God. 

Please follow us:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hopealivewithgod/

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/hopealiveministry/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LakeComChurch/ -Lake Community Church

Transcript

This is Hope Alive, where we apply God's Word to our daily life. My name is Chad Harrison. I'm first a husband, a father and a grandfather. I'm also the teaching pastor at Lake Community Church in Dadeville, Alabama on beautiful Lake Martin. I've been serving as a pastor for over 30 years. I also serve as the Tallapoosa County District Judge. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word verse by verse through the Bible and to find his purpose and will for your daily life. If you would like sponsor this podcast, go to the Show Notes where there's a link where you can make a donation. I pray in the name of Jesus that God would open his word to you, allow you to see him and to know him, so that you would know his will and his way for your life that you might walk in faith and power each and every day, especially today. Word of God, please speak to the hearers of your voice today in the name of Jesus. Amen. Foreign. Welcome to Lake Community Church's morning Bible study. We are in Joshua, chapter 20, Joshua chapter 20. And we're going to do the whole chapter because it's a short chapter and it deals with the cities of refuge. And we actually have had had a Bible study on this before when, when God told Moses about the understanding of the cities of refuge, and when he was telling them about taking the promised land, he told Moses that they were going to have to set up cities of refuge. And he gave the explanation of how that worked. And it's again here a different one, because what God's doing is telling Joshua to set up the cities of refuge. So you got Moses, then you've got Joshua. God saying, set these cities of refuge up. Now, when that happens in scripture, that's really important because you know, when you're studying scripture and God says the same thing over and over and over again, he's trying to get it across to you. I say it many, many times that most people need to hear a spiritual truth at least seven times before they completely internalize it. Some people it's more than seven times, some people less. But generally speaking, the timeframe's about seven times. Seven times. Here in a spiritual truth, you begin to first time it makes sense in your head, you begin to mull it over. Second, third time, you begin to receive it and accept it. Fourth and fifth time, you begin to start trying to apply it. And then the sixth and seventh time, once you've had some application, you make it a part of who you are. And so that's really kind of the process of receiving spiritual truth. That's why you have to consistently and regularly be taking in spiritual truth. Cities of refuge are really a kind of important mile marker. And they're a effort by God, in my opinion, their effort by God to reveal to us that sin does have a part in our will. And what I mean by that. Well, now we're born sinful. We have it passed on, genetically passed on it spiritually by our parents. The Bible says through one man, sin entered the world. That's Adam. So if it just entered through him, then it ought to stop through him. But it didn't. It didn't stop through him. It was passed on to his children. And how do I know that? Well, Seth was born in the image of Adam. That's what it says in Genesis. And Seth was his third son. And so does that mean that Cain and Abel were born in the garden? I don't know. There's not an answer to that question. But we do know that Seth was born in the image of Adam, and everybody else after that was born in the image of their parents. You received the genetic. We know all this. This is science. We received the genetic codes of our parents. They come together and they make us. And so we know that we're born in the image of our parents. We know that we're born in sin. And then Jesus Christ is the answer to that sin problem. And he comes and he gives us life, and he gives us abundant life. And so that understanding kind of gives us. Well, it just gives us an idea of how things are going on and what's going on with who we are. Cities of refuge speak to a sin that is not committed by your will. Now, you have sins of omission, means sins that you don't do, things that you don't do that you should do. You have sins of commission, things you do that should not be done. And. And then you have sins of intentionality and unintentional sin. So we have sins that we intentionally choose to do, and we have sin that we just do as a natural part of being sinful. And so the sin of. And, you know, God uses the biggest thing, the thing that everybody is the most upset about, the thing that causes the Most clicks on YouTube as far as when they do a documentary on somebody who is murdered. The sin of murder, the taking of human life. It's a big thing. It's one of the big commandments. Thou shalt not murder, Thou shalt not kill. It is the big thing. But even in the idea of murder, and by the way, this is in our legal system, this idea that we find here in Joshua chapter 20 is inculcated in our legal system. We have levels of homicide in our codes. Each state is different. Maybe a little different here and there, but there is the idea of unintentional sin, meaning you did something and it caused someone to die, but you weren't intending for them to die. You've got reckless homicide, which is a misdemeanor, by the way. I do something reckless and somebody dies from it. You have manslaughter, which is really what is talked about here. And manslaughter is I did something wrong, but what I was doing wrong had no intent to cause somebody to be killed, and I didn't. It may not be a crime, but it was definitely a wrongful act. And that wrongful act caused the death of somebody else. That's manslaughter. And there's a lot of nuance to this. I'm not going to get into the Alabama law. But then you have intentional murder. I intended to do it, but I did it out of the heat of passion. Then you have, I intended to do it, I planned it, I laid it out, and then I executed it. You have murder, that is the murder of police officer, murder of child under 12, murder of multiple people, and those are capital offenses, meaning they involve your life. If you go through all these, there's several stages to this, and most of it deal. In fact, almost all of it deals with intentionality. And God is into you understanding that you are naturally, innately sinful. And so you need a redeemer, but you also have a will. And he wants to bring that will in line with his will. And that means he wants to bring the intent of your heart and the intent of your actions in line with his heart and his actions. And so this kind of gives you that legal foundation, that. That understanding, that deep biblical understanding of why things happen the way they do, and that you. You do have a role to play in choosing to walk in God's will and not yours. Verse 20 says, the Lord spoke to Joshua, saying, speak to the children of Israel, saying, appoint for yourselves cities of refuge, of which I spoke to you through Moses. So he's saying, I've told you this before, I'm telling you again. He's giving you a signal. Think about this. This has some foundational importance to you so you can understand spiritual truth. He says that the slayer who kills a person, that means the person who. The slayer. I like that. It's A cool saying. But the murderer, the person who commits the homicide, who kills a person accidentally or unintentionally. Notice what we call, and I'm going to give you a legal term, the mens rea. Your intent in the action is accidental or unintentional, meaning you weren't trying to kill them, may flee there, meaning they can flee to these cities and they shall be a refuge for the avenger of blood. Meaning those who would come to kill that person to take a. To take vengeance out on them because they killed one of their family members. And the avenger of blood is a kin. You have the kinsman Redeemer who redeems you to the land. You have the avenger of blood who avenges those in the family who have been murdered. Both of them are the same person, and that is called the Goel. And the Goel is an important figure. And we're gonna definitely deal with the Goel when we're in the Book of. Because the Book of Ruth Boaz is the. He's the Goel, he's the kinsman Redeemer, and he would also be the avenger of blood. And by the way, Jesus is the kinsman redeemer and the avenger of blood. He's the ultimate one. And so he avenges the blood of the saints, and he redeems the saints out of sin. So we've got this refuge, this city of refuge to protect you from the Avenger of blood. It says when he flees to those cities and stands at the entrance of the gates of the cities and declares his case in the hearing of the elders of the city. Now he's got to tell what happened. He's got to come to the city gates and he's got to tell what happened. And he's got to tell them, I did not mean to commit this. This was unintentional. It was accidental. I did not mean to kill this person. It says they shall take him into the city as one of them and give him a place and he may dwell among them. Meaning he's got to come in and he's got to become a part of that city. He's got to become a part of that culture. That's a really important idea too, by the way. When you have. Have put yourself in a position where you're. We do this with, with. With especially drug abuse, somebody who's, who's become addicted to drugs. We take them to a different location and we inculcate them in that location in an environment where they're. They're not likely to do drugs. So they are off of drugs, they're away from drugs. And then they're. They're assimilated into that community and they become a part of that community separate from the drugs and separate from the people who were. They were doing the drugs with anyway. It's the same idea. You remove them from their location, you inculcate them or make them a part of that community. And they become a part of what's going on there. And they have a new and different life. God said, if you kill someone unintentionally, if you commit murder, I'm going to save you from those who would avenge themselves upon you. And I'm going to put you in a place where you can become a part of the community there and have a whole new life. It's a reset. It really is. Then the avenger of blood pursues him. They shall not deliver the slayer into his hands because he struck his neighbor unintentionally, but he did not hate him beforehand. Meaning he didn't do it with intent because he hated him. He did something and it resulted in them dying. He says, and he shall dwell in the city until he stands before the Congregation of Judgment and until the death of the one who. The high priest of those days, by the way, they going to have a trial to find out if it was intentional or not. And eventually, if they figure out that it's unintentional, he gets to stay there. And how long does he have to stay there? He has to stay there till the high priest in office at that time dies. So if the high priest lives 10 more years, he stays there 10 years. If he lives 20 years, he stays there 20 years. And so it says, the slayer may return and come to his own city and his own house, to the city from which he fled once the chief priest at that time is dead. And so they appointed Kadesh in Galilee. They appointed Naphtali in Shechem in the mountains of Ephraim, Kirjath, Arba and Hebron in the mountains of Judah. And on the other side of the Jordan by Jericho, eastward. They assigned Bezer in the wilderness of the plain from the tribe of Reuben, Ramoth and Gilead, from the tribe of Gad and Golan in Bashan, which is very up in the north, the Golan Heights, from the tribe of Manasseh. These were the cities appointed for the children of Israel and for the stranger who dwelt among them. That whoever killed and personally accidentally killed a person accidentally might flee there and not die. By the hand of the Avenger of Blood until he stood before the congregation. Notice there's a standing before the congregation. There is a standing before the Avenger of Blood. And he has found that he didn't intentionally do it. And they say he has got a sea of refuge and he gets to stay there. And by the way, when he leaves the city of Refuge, the Avenger blood can't kill him because if he kills him, then they can avenge that blood on the Avenger of Blood. Why? Because there is intentional sin and then there's the sin that is innate to our nature. What does God do? The sin that's innate to our nature, he redeems us out of that sin. What does he do with that sin that we intentionally commit in our lives each and every day? Well, he deals with that. He deals with that. You go, what do you mean he deals with that? Well, he's not going to deal with in heaven because you've been redeemed and your sin is. Is cast as far away from you as the east is from the west. It's gotta be dealt with right now. Which means he's gotta bring your heart and your mind in line with his will. How does he do that? Well, he disciplines us. Those whom the Father loves, He does discipline. He does discipline us. He's gonna give us discipline. He's gonna handle us, and he's gonna teach us to walk in his ways. And so he's gonna teach us to not walk in intentional sin. And that's what City's refuge is all about. It's a great little study. It's a great understanding. It's a great cornerstone idea that you can kind of put in the back of your mind. It kind of codifies a lot of ideas about sin, about intentionality, about the innate nature of sin, about how God deals with that, how there are consequences to our sin in the life that we live right now. We're not separate from them. And that God teaches us to walk in his will and his way regularly. And he teaches us to walk in his will and his way because he loves us and because we walk in his best and we walk in life when we walk in his will and his way. What a great study. As you go today, I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you, that he'll make his face to shine upon you and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.