Gooding, David: 17 - Details of Section 5

We come now to the penultimate section of the book of Joshua, section five, that begins in chapter eighteen, verse two. As it was in the first half of the book, so it is now. In the first half of the book, we saw how section two which you may have now forgotten, but section two began with a notice that all the kings had heard what had happened. And then when we came to section three, we noticed that it opened with a very similar observation. Now, when all the kings had heard. And we noticed further how those two sections, section two and three, pose very interesting similarities and contrasts. We notice, remarkable of all, how the section two described in detail God's judgment on Canaanite cities of Jericho and Ai. Where section three described in detail God's mercy on Canaanite cities, namely on Gibeon and its satellite towns. And other similarities and contrasts we notice that we need not now repeat. What is true of sections two and three is true also of sections four and five. Both are concerned with the distribution of the inheritance among the tribes. Section four begins, however, with a problem, and the problem is Joshua's. He is now old and well stricken in years. Nonetheless, God encourages him and commissions him as what he is to do, because the problem is this, that though he is old, there remaineth much more of the land to be possessed. Joshua is not going to last long enough to lead the conquest of these remaining parts that remain to be possessed. Nonetheless, to allot the territory to his tribes in the assurance that God will eventually give that territory into their hands, as well as that which already has been given. Section five likewise, begins with a problem. It also concerns itself with the distribution of the inheritance. But the problem this time is not Joshua's old age. It is the sheer slackness of the seven tribes to rise up and show some initiative in the purpose of entering into their inheritance. So let's read the passage again that we read yesterday. This is Joshua chapter eighteen verse two. And there remained, but not here much land to be possessed, as in ch- uh, section four, but there remained among the children of Israel seven tribes which had not yet divided their inheritance. And Joshua said unto the children of Israel, how long are you slack to go in to possess the land which the Lord, the God of your fathers, has given you? In what follows, he appears to reproach them because they had not taken the initiative, but left it to him. His advice, therefore, is this: appoint for you three men for each tribe, and I will send them, and they shall arise and walk through the land and describe it according to their inheritance, and they shall come unto me, and they shall divide it into seven portions. Judah shall abide in his border on the south, and the house of Joseph shall abide in their border on the north. And you shall describe the land into seven portions, and bring the description hither to me, and I will cast lots for you here before the Lord our God. For the Levites have no portion among you, for the priesthood of the Lord is their inheritance. And Gad and Reuben and the half tribe of Manasseh have received their inheritance beyond Jordan eastward. Notice that repeated remark about those two and a half tribes in the east, which Moses, the servant of the Lord, gave them. So the men arose and went, and Joshua charged them that went to describe the land, saying, go and walk through the land and describe it and come again to me, and I will cast lots for you here before the Lord in Shiloh. The men went and passed through the land and described it by cities into seven portions in a book. And they came to Joshua unto the camp at Shiloh. Joshua cast lots for them in Shiloh before the Lord. There Joshua divided the land unto the children of Israel according to their division. Now I must be careful what I say about these ancient brethren, lest when I meet them in glory, they reproach me for having criticized them when I had shown so much slackness myself. And not taken initiatives that I ought to have taken to make further progress in the things of God. But it is a problem, my brethren, is slackness. And you will remember that the writer to the Hebrews raises it in his epistle, when he reproaches, gently reproaches his readers that at the time they ought to be teachers of the word, they had need that somebody teach them. This is Hebrews four and chapter five. of whom we have many things to say and hard of interpretation, seeing you are become dull of hearing. For when by reason of the time you ought to be teachers, you have need again that someone teach you the rudiments, the ABC of the first principles of the oracles of God, and have become such as have need of milk and not of solid food, become dull of hearing. We can cast around in our mind to, uh, think why these Hebrew believers have become dull of hearing. It is a disease, you know. Constant failure to apply oneself to the word of God does affect the old brain box, let alone one's spirit, and it will become progressively harder to understand the spiritual things of God. It is a disease carefully to be avoided, and if possible, for those who have the responsibility for younger people to see to it that they are not allowed to develop it. Professor Bruce, in his commentary on Hebrews, suggests that one of the reasons why these people had become dull of hearing was that they didn't particularly want to hear what was now to be told them. They had embraced the rudiments of Christianity, that Jesus was the Messiah. Yes, and they had professed faith in him and been baptized in his name and gathered with the Lord's people. At that stage, they perhaps hadn't realized what faith in Jesus as the Christ would imply. For it would mean not only was he the Messiah, but that his sacrifice had put an end to all the sacrifices in the temple. His ascension and exaltation by God signified that he was a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, and his priesthood put an end to Aaron's priesthood. And his sacrifice, death burial, and ascension into the very immediate presence of God render obsolete the pretty function of a high priest dressed up in rather colorful robes, going into the back room of a building in Jerusalem. At best, that Judaism was but symbols, solemn symbols in that day, and beautiful symbols, and significant symbols. But who wants a torch when the sun shines? Perhaps it was that these dear believers, when they began to realize the implications of Jesus being Messiah, and the implications of his death, resurrection and ascension, his sacrifice and atoning blood, were not quite prepared to face what it would mean. You see in the Acts of the Apostles that the early believers did not immediately realize that eventually the temple would pass. They gathered happily in the temple and went on with their sacrifices. God is gracious and kind and gives people time to absorb new ideas, fundamental changes. It took Stephen, who was not a Palestinian, of a Palestinian synagogue, but he was a Hellenist. Hellenist Jews, of course, in places like Alexandria, had synagogues but had no temple down there, and may have visited the temple in Jerusalem only occasionally. So that they went through years without offering any sacrifices down there, and they didn't have a priest, any more than a Jewish synagogue nowadays has an altar, sacrifices, and priests. But Stephen very soon saw that the sacrifice of Christ and now his ascension into glory would bring the temple to an end. He was martyred for it. Cost him his life. And it is difficult, isn't it, for some very Orthodox Jews to this present day. If they come to feel that Jesus, believe that Jesus is the Messiah yet to face, because of the break with Judaism. So perhaps we could make these excuses for the Hebrews to whom the writer wrote. At what time they ought to be teachers of the word. They could only take the rudiments, the a, B, C. Now we should never dep- despise the simple basics of the gospel, should we? Uh, I confess my sins. I have very wise, or have had very wise elders in my time, you'll see. I think they now despair of me, but never mind. Often, in my thinking, just a little bit too often, they say, keep it simple, brother. And under my breath, I say, why keep it simple? What would they say, I wonder, if I addressed their twenty-two-year-old years old son, he's going into computers, and I say, now don't take it too far, my boy, keep it simple. Or their daughter has become financial manager for a bank, and I said, now all those accounts are all that too complicated, keep it simple, my dear. Or your great uncle dies in Minnesota, wherever that is, and and the solicitor tells you that he's left you in his will. And you go to your solicitor, and he sits you down, he reads the will. This is a very expensive operation in Britain, but I don't know how it goes here. And he begins to read, you see, he's left you all his cash in the bank, that's a few billion, and now he's rest- left you his preferential shares in sundry firms, and his investments here, and his ransom where, and you lose patience. You say, now look here, solicitor, keep it simple. I'm not interested in this detail. Well, you don't, nor would I. I'd say, make it more complicated, solicitor. Keep on the detail if you can. Don't stop just yet. Why should we be content with the ABC, gentlemen? Because if we don't pro- progress beyond the ABC when we could, we shall lose the ability to proceed. It is a spiritual disability to become hard of hearing. So these people were slack, says Joshua, and uh, now he proposes, uh, a procedure to deal with this. He says, you appoint men. Joshua doesn't appoint them, you appoint them. Three men for each of the seven tribes, that's twenty one men. And let them go through all the re- remaining territory that is to be shared out among these seven tribes, and describe it, that is delineate it in its details, and put it in a book. I don't know whether their slackness was that they'd never been round to see it, or whether they'd gone round to see it and thought it wasn't much, uh, good. Or whether they'd been round to see it and saw too many giants are peeping out of odd corners. But now they were to get these men to go round and survey it and put the details in a book and bring it before the Lord at Shiloh. Lovely, isn't it? You'll forgive my, uh, leap of exposition to practical matters. I wonder, did they really have an idea of the wealth that was in front of them? As they never really thought it out. Now they had it in front of their eyes in a book. Before the Lord. Well, my brothers, my sisters, there is an infinite wealth recorded in this book. Don't break my heart or the Lord's heart either by saying it's too complicated, keep it simple. No, don't keep it simple. Make the wealth abundant. Fire people's imagination with the wealth of God's inheritance and the variety of it, as people are able to bear it, of course. That reading the book may not mean reading just a rule book. But a book such as the Holy Spirit may use, not only to fill our minds with knowledge, but our imaginations with the glory. What is the exceeding riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, so that the wealth of salvation comes across in our own hearts, and then in our preaching and teaching. We have in England, always have had, I think, now it's more complicated, I believe, a book called The Highway Code. It's all the rules and regulations that you have to observe if you draw- drive a car on the roads in Britain. Well, it's good to read, one ought to know it and obey it. I tell you a a secret, I don't take it to bed with me and read it as bedside reading. It's just a lot of rules, you know. When I am off colour and need the help, I go to the doctor. He's the expert, and he gets all his knowledge out of books. Oh, thank, thank, thank God for that. I don't take a medical book to bed with me and just read it with all its gory pictures in it. Or would I take this book. It contains some rules and laws, but all the wonder of it, the wealth of it, the sheer glory to enlighten our imaginations in the right sense of imagination, that we may grasp with imagination and heart what our minds grasp of the facts. And helped by the Spirit of God, the very glory shines before us and draws us on towards heaven, draws us on to explore God's word in all its wealth. We shall not attract many modern youth by reducing the Bible to little stories, such are told to Sunday school children. Needs to be grown up stuff, gentlemen. God's answer to the problems of the universe. So they wrote it down in a book, and they came before the Lord and cast lots for it. They couldn't all have exactly the same lot. So they waited on God, trusting his guidance, providence, to give them therefrom, from this book, which particular part of the inheritance he would choose. We are all different, aren't we? And the Lord knows how to reveal himself to each one of us individually. Before he left, he said to his apostles, I will not leave you orphans. I come to you. Not I will come, that he will do. I will come again and receive you to myself. But from time to time, according to his promise, he would come to them. And he added, I will manifest myself to you. When he rose from the dead, throughout forty days, he gave object lessons to the apostles and others of what he meant by appearing and coming to them. And it is interesting to observe the different ways in which the Lord came to his people after his resurrection in the course of those forty days. They were all different. For two on the road to Emmaus, as we know so very well. He appeared, oh, their eyes were holden, and they didn't realize who it was. And they confided in him their disillusionment. There's this Jesus of Nazareth, they said, and we thought he was going to be not the redeemer of Israel, no, no, no. We thought he was going to be the liberator of Israel. They were thinking in political terms. We great hopes in him that he was going to be our liberator, deliver us from the Romans, and fulfill I don't know how many prophecies in the Old Testament. But you know, far from that, he let himself get arrested. And inexplicably, he allowed himself to be crucified. They say to you, now, it's true that certain of our women folks, they came and they'd been at the tomb, and they said they'd seen visions of angels or something. They said he was alive, but you know what women are, don't you? Anyway, it was irrelevant anyway. Because if he couldn't keep himself alive, and I'm gonna have to be a liberator, what use is it? It wasn't the Messiah. And the stranger. Listen. And they said, you know, hmm, that's what the angel said to them. He was alive. Then one or both of these men on the road to Emmaus looked the Lord Jesus in the face. And said, you know, the women didn't see him. They Have a were look looking at at him. Interesting how he began his conversation. You foolish men, he said. How's that for the kind, gentle, loving Jesus? You senseless people, he said. Thoughtless. Ought not the Messiah to have suffered these things and enter into his glory? And beginning from Moses, he expounded to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. Gave them a Bible study. Delightfully rich, wasn't it? And as he s- opened the scriptures, their hearts somehow warmed. And they began to see that since scripture prophesied that the Messiah was first, must first suffer and then enter into his glory, then the fact that Jesus had suffered did not prove that he wasn't the Christ, it proved that he was. And they drew near to the village where they went, and he made as though he would go further. Often he still does. Well, they said, no, no, you've no need, come in with, with us, for the day is far spent. He went in, was known to them in the breaking of bread. He comes still, you know. We see no form. We hear no voice. But you've known it a thousand times, haven't you? When in your study of Holy Scripture, you worked hard to get the facts into you. But in a moment, not maybe frequently, but there comes a moment when the thing lights up. You see it. And you know it to be the person of the risen Lord, who is speaking and expounding his word to you. It's one way he manifests himself. To Mary Magdalene in the garden, he manifested himself, of course, in a completely different way. He didn't begin saying, you fool woman. Of course he didn't. Broken hearted, with her affectionate heart towards the Lord. She said, if you're the gardener and you've removed him, please tell me where he is so that I may take him away. He said, Mary. It was the way he said the name that betrayed who it was. He calls his own sheep by name. And he said later, I know my sheep, and my sheep know me, even as I know the Father, and the Father knows me. There is a relation shet- shet- set up between the shepherd and his sheep, personally, personal knowledge, both sides. On the analogy, and similar to that intimate knowledge and relationship between the Father and the Son. Of all the most miraculous and stupendous things, that the Son of God has a relationship with each one of us by name. We know him as he knows us. He makes himself thus known in different ways to different people. And to Mary, he said, go and tell my brothers, I send to my father and your father, to my God and your God. But with Mary, that was not empty words. A relationship. Marvelous because the Lord Jesus was already the other side of the grave. And she's still in this world. But a relationship that was real. And she left the sepulcher and went and told the brothers. It's a marvelous story, of course, part of the evidence of the truth of the resurrection. Why did the early Christian women abandon the tomb? Quite contrary to female psychology. It was the women that went, and they went with their spices, and they were going to embalm the body, and they were going to make this, uh, grave a treasured, sacred spot that where they may come and say their prayers and keep the body as often as intact as they could and venerate the tomb. Why did the Christian women abandon the tomb? So that its location was lost for centuries? You don't make a tomb. You don't make a, a shrine to somebody who's alive. It wasn't just a theological doctrine that he was alive. It was an experienced reality. To a number of as- a- apostles on the Sea of Galilee, he manifested himself, according to John chapter twenty one. But then again, in a completely different fashion. They were up there in the north. John doesn't tell us why. Perhaps they were doing what they were told to do. Christ said, I shall go before you into Galilee, and there will you meet me. So perhaps that was the reason why they were up there. Mm-hmm. I don't know whether they enjoyed a conference center like this. I doubt it, really, but... there they were waiting. And somebody had to get the breakfast. It didn't fall out of the sky. Now, Peter has been criticized very severely by many preachers. I find it hard in my heart to criticize him. Somebody jolly well got to get the breakfast. Peter being a fisherman, went fishing. He was not going back on his commitment to Christ to be a fisher of men. Paul was not going back on his commitment to Christ when he made tents at Collins. He was making the necessary money to maintain his missionary work. If he hadn't been prepared to work like that and earn his own money when necessary, a lot of his missionary work would have been impossible. He told the elders at Ephesus, gentlemen, look at my hands. These three years I've been with you, I've worked, gentlemen. I worked and paid my own expenses and the expenses of my team, as well as preaching daily in the school of Toranas and visiting house to house. And how the man did it, I can't begin to think. That's what he said. That's pioneer missionary work, that is. So they went to fishing, these men. Men. They caught nothing all that night. In the morning, a stranger stood on the shore. They didn't recognize who it was. He suggested that they cast the net on the other side. So they did that. They caught such an abundance of fish. Whereupon John realized what it was. He nudged Peter, said, Peter, that's the Lord. You notice they realized it was the Lord's guidance after the event, and not before it. So very often, I have found it in my life. We see the Lord's guidance after the event, rather than before. In our work in eastern parts, we have often had grave difficulties that we thought were going to make the Lord's work almost impossible, and found afterwards that the difficulties were the secret of a much expanded work than ever we had devised. We've seen the Lord's guidance afterwards. Oh, but I wander on, uh, have mercy on me, gentlemen. I'm straying a long way away, am I not, from my basic passage, but then old men do that. Uh, do you see? Ha. It's all about... They wrote the description of the inheritance in a book. They came with the book before the Lord, and they asked the Lord to direct them and give what this book now offered. Give it to each tribe according to his wise and loving knowledge of their abilities. Why are you slack? Said Joshua to these seven tribes to go in for your inheritance. And with this, taking the book and casting lots, the seven tribes received their inheritance and went out to take it. The subsequent passages, as you see, I think you have the sheets in front of you, but anyway, they are on the overhead. The second, uh, the the consequent paragraphs emphasize other things that they then were required to do, and which they did. Notice, for instance, Roman three, They did what was spoken of by God through Moses. And notice four, which the Lord commanded the tribes through Moses. And still to this point in the book, we are seeing that what Moses couldn't himself do, that Joshua did and achieved. From the territories that they then acquired, they first gave the city to Joshua, in gratitude, of course, for the tremendous things that he had done for them. A city for Joshua. Then they were required by God through Moses to appoint cities of refuge. You see, you would have re- you would have gathered from the text that when the men, the surveyors went out and described the territories, they described them according to their cities. There would have been cities there, not big cities as in our modern words city means, but major dwelling places. And of course, some of them would be, uh, uh, rather rather empty because of what Joshua had done, and they would come and occupy those cities, if need be, driving out the Canaanites who had returned. Of these cities that they then took over as their possession, they were now required to give up some of them and turn them into cities of refuge. In the next place, they were required to give up other cities and hand them over to the Levites. Because the Levites had no territory as such, their portion was the Lord. The Lord was their portion, not merely spiritually, but they lived of the offerings that were offered in the tabernacle, and each of the priests and the Levites got their share of God's income, so to speak, and they lived largely from that. Though they had to be given not only cities to live in, but a certain area around the city where they might keep a few chickens, perhaps, and a sheep or two. Glebe land, as it's called in English. The tribes, and not only the seven tribes, but all the tribes had to do that out of their inheritance. Inheritance. Let us ponder the significance for them, and then for us. The cities of refuge. They were an important thing, and reading the book of Numbers, you will find them mentioned more than once by Moses before the Israelites crossed the Jordan. Cities of refuge and the regulations that controlled them. It was for the case of accidental homicide, when a man accidentally killed a fellow man. Perhaps he was cutting wood in the forest, and his axe head flew off and caught the other man in the head and killed him. But there was no malice aforethought. He hadn't done it deliberately. Or it could be that they got angry and the, uh, the man, uh, biffed his fellow hard, but not intending to murder him, but managed to kill him anyway without intending to. Unintentional homicide. Now, under the law of the kinsman, avenger, and redeemer, the nearest relative of the man that had been killed had the right, and indeed the duty, to pursue the homicide. And if he caught up with him, he had a right to kill him. In that older system of justice, the Greeks had it in their day early on, there was, of course, a certain lack of equity. In places like Afghanistan, they have it still. I'm told if you accidentally hit somebody up by your motor car, so they carelessly walked in front of it, you don't stop, you carry on, because if you don't, you'll be murdered anyway by the next of kin, the kinsman avenger. Here then, under Moses, was legislation to regulate this function of the kinsman avenger. There were to be these cities of refuge put strategically in different parts of the country, so that an accidental homicide might flee thither. When he got there, the elders of that city would have a prima facie investigation of it and decide whether this man had a case for being a spare. If they decided that there was a case, they took him into the city, and the avenger of blood was not allowed to follow him in. If now the avenger of blood tried to kill the homicide, the avenger of blood would have been regarded guilty of murder. Then it would seem, and there are two or three passages that add details, it would seem that the elders of that city had to bring the man before the all-tribal assembly, who decided his case. And if they decided that he was not guilty of murder, it was a genuine accident, accidental homicide. Then they gave their verdict. And if now the avenger of blood tried to kill the man, again, of course, he would be found guilty of murder. The interesting thing is that the accidental homicide, now when the court, the all-tribal assembly had pronounced that he was innocent of murder, it was accidental homicide, was not allowed to go home. He had to stay in the city of refuge. It raises the interesting question, and I put it to you for your solution of the problem, of course. Why did he have to stay, if he were innocent of murder, why did he have to stay in the city of refuge? Yes. Why was that so? Righto, while you are searching. Uh, our good friend here points out he had to stay till the death of the high priest. When the high priest died, he could go home. But at first sight, that seems an unusual arrangement, does it not? The high priest might die next Tuesday afternoon, or he mightn't die for the next forty years. Why did he have to stay until the death of the high priest? Some have suggested that the high priest wore on his mitre holiness to the Lord, so that, to use the phrase, he should bear the iniquities in the holy thing. Therefore, some have suggested that the death of the high priest would have been regarded as wiping the slate clean, if you see what I mean, of all difficult situations that had arisen, so that thou the man could go home. At any rate, it shows a compassion, does it not, for the relatives of the man who was killed. Or to have an accidental homicide cleared of murder, that's one thing. To have him come home next Tuesday and live in the farm opposite with his wife and children, enjoying all the products of the farm, and the woman the other side of the road left a widower, a widow for the rest of her life. Might have seemed very difficult to bear. Should not the accidental homicide bear some responsibility for the damage done. Pardon? Pardon? Twenty six. Yeah, read it there, what it says, sir. And he shall dwell in that city, and city stand before the congregation for judgment, until the death of the high priest that shall be in those days, then shall the slayer return and come onto his own city and onto his own house, onto the city from where he fled. Mm. Very good. I shall be interested in your opinion on the matter. I have asked, surreptitiously, I have asked Christian lawyers from time to time when I found myself out in- invited out to dinner or tea, and there happens to be seated at the table a Christian lawyer, you see. I say, now is my opportunity. And I innocently say, you know, there are a lot of laws in the Old Testament, Exodus twenty one onwards and so forth. I don't really understand. I wonder, could you tell me something about the jurisprudence lying, the logic, that is to say, behind these laws in the Old Testament? Well, they're good men, these lawyers, but they are so busy with modern law that sometimes they have no answers to these questions of jurisprudence in the Old Testament. And you say, why on earth should we be interested in it, the whole thing is scrapped now. Yeah, I know it's all scrapped. But did it make sense at the time? Because I do believe myself that those, those regulations we have in scripture are inspired record of God. And if they didn't make sense at the time, that would be a serious matter, wouldn't it? Why shouldn't a few Christian lawyers be interested in the topic and help us laymen to undiscover the jurisprudence of the Old Testament, you see? Ah, but now to come to other things. This offense, accidental homicide, one of the phrases for it, if we're translated literally, is somebody that kills somebody without knowing it. That is without intending it. Israel in a later century was guilty of a homicide of staggering implications. They They killed killed the Prince of Life. What escape should there be for anybody like that? Any hope? You say they did it deliberately, didn't they? Well, they knew what they were doing, so it seems. But Peter, standing up among them, says, I realize that in ignorance you did it. All mercy of God. Offering forgiveness to the murderers of Christ. I walked it in ignorance. You did it. We must be very careful, of course, how we speak when we talk about Jews responsible for the death of Christ. Peter in Jerusalem, talking to the authorities, charges them straight with the murder of the Messiah. But Paul, preaching in the synagogue at Pisidian Antioch, doesn't accuse the Pisidian Jews of murdering the Messiah. Our Lord was crucified, dead, buried, and ascended to heaven before they even heard of it. He says it was our rulers in Jerusalem that did it. Not knowing the scriptures and the prophets which are read every Sabbath day in their synagogue. They fulfilled them in condemning him. The last thing they should have done is to c- condemn him. They thought by condemning him they were proving he wasn't the Messiah. By condemning him they were proving he was, because they fulfilled the scriptures, which they read, but read ignorantly, without realizing what the prophets were saying. We must likewise be careful not to accuse Jews that were never involved in it, with the murder of Jesus. It was their rulers in Judea that did it. But the point remains of the marvelous mercy of God, even to the populace that had stood around the cross, crying their heads off, away with him, crucify him, we will not have this man to reign over us, an opportunity to be Save. saved. Paul himself describes his conversion in these terms. I was before injurious, and so forth, and I persecuted the church. I was the very chief of sinners, but I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly and in unbelief. For all you might have thought his persecution of believers was deliberate, and deliberate it was. He'd never yet been illuminated by God's spirit, and confesses what he did, he did in blind ignorance, Jose, and never forgot it for the rest of his life. So therefore, as we ponder these things, their legal implications, their jurisprudence, and then take liberty to jump across to our own age, relate it to the death of Christ, to the world's rejection of Christ, and to the gospel message, the refuge as is held out by God for those responsible for the death of Christ. It's an early form, isn't it, of God's mercy, a gospel, so to speak. These cities of refuge had to be provided by the tribes out of their inheritance. And we, out of our inheritance, some of it given to promote the gospel message of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, his cross and atonement and forgiveness for sinners. Part of our inheritance, gentlemen, surely should be devoted, not in theory merely, but in actual practice, to the propagation of that gospel. What else had they to give? Well, they had to assign cities for the Levites. The services in the temple and the tabernacle had to go on every day of the week. There were occasions, of course, on feast days and so forth, when great crowds would gather around the tabernacle, but the services were not like you will have in your halls where you meet, whatever you call them. It, the people didn't sit inside the tabernacle. They didn't sit anywhere, or even in the great temple in Jerusalem, did they sit inside it? They came and observed the ceremonies, you'll see. And, uh, then they went away. But there was a daily sacrifice, morning and night, called the tarmiv, in the tabernacle and subsequently in the temple. The The tarm- Talmid, the perpetual sacrifice. It had to be a burnt offering, which was offered, everything offered up to God in the morning and in the evening on the behalf of Israel. Whereas Israel went about its daily work, a symbol of their devotion to God was being offered morning and evening in the tabernacle. Of course, the priests and the Levites had to do it, as well as all the other sacrifices, women who are now being cleansed after childbirth, and all kinds of things had to be done. And so there were courses for the priests and courses for the Levites, and the whole thing had to be maintained. Out of their inheritance, the people were required to assign cities, whole cities for the Levites, that the worship and service of God might continue. You say we don't need a priestly order now. Good for you. You are priests, yes? Oh, very good. And you're at it all day long, aren't you? In perpetual devotion to the Lord. And where it is necessary, for those who are so engaged in the service of God, ministering the gospel like priests, says Paul. And they can't survive otherwise, prepared to give our material goods and wealth to support them. These were the requirements of ancient Israel. We can scarce do less, can we? So we come to the end of that section. The Lord gave to Israel all the land which he swore to give to their fathers, and they possessed it and dwelt in it. And the Lord gave them rest round about, according to all that he sware unto their fathers. And there stood not a man of all their enemies before them. The Lord delivered all their enemies into their hand. There failed not all, not aught of any good thing which the Lord has spoken unto the house of Israel. All came to pass. Very brave words indeed, aren't they? You'll say, but what, what about all that land that may remain to be possessed and hadn't been yet possessed? And what about what the historians already told us, that some of them, when they went into their cities, couldn't drive out the natives and had a big job, and in the end had to put them to task worse. What, what are you saying? That no man stood before them, and there failed nothing. Mm-hmm. I'd be interested to hear this evening in the question time what your own attitude to that question is. Suppose I were able to come to each one of you after these sessions and say to you, what have you found in your experience? Has the Lord failed you in anything? I wonder what you'd say. Would you say, yes, he's come short here and come short there, and I'm horribly disappointed. I somehow think not. You would say he's done all things well. I think if I then asked you, have you conquered all your enemies? Have you entered into all your inheritance? You probably would say, no, indeed not. How do you put the two things together? I think you would tell me, don't you start blaming the Lord. I have come short in my faith, in my activity. But the Lord has never failed me. It is not he that has come short. The time has run out for questions, so that pray take your rest, and we will come back for a, uh, further short period announced here as beginning at four fifty five, and then we can begin with question.