Let's begin with a question or two. When you harbor painful emotions, when you feel

a deep sense of loss or fear, to whom do you turn? Do you have a trustworthy friend, a

confidant you can bear your soul to? Today, on InSight for Living, Chuck Swindall continues

his brand new series on Joshua. This is message number eight in a nine-part study that concludes

next Thursday. In this portion of our study, we'll discover God's provision to the Israelites

when they desperately needed a refuge. Chuck titled today's message, Needed, a Safe Place

to heal. I want to read for you from a very unusual chapter in the Bible. There's no other

chapter quite like it. It represents what was for the people of the Hebrews a magnificent place

where they could find healing, safety, relief. It's a chapter about the cities of refuge. We read

of it in the 20th chapter of Joshua. I'd like you to turn there, please. I'll be reading for you

these nine verses from the new Living Translation. The Lord said to Joshua, now, tell the Israelites to

designate the cities of refuge as I instructed Moses. Anyone who kills another person accidentally,

unintentionally, can run to one of these cities. They will be places of refuge from relatives seeking

revenge for the person who was killed. Upon reaching one of these cities, the one who caused the death

will appear before the elders of the city gate and present his case. They must allow him to enter the

city and give him a place to live among them. If the relatives of the victim come to avenge the killing,

the leaders must not release the slayer to them. For he killed the other person unintentionally without

hostility. But the slayer must stay in that city and be tried by the local assembly which will render

a judgment and he must continue to live in that city until the death of the high priest who was in

office at the time of the accident. After that, he is free to return to his own home in the town from which he fled.

The following cities were designated as cities of refuge. Kadesh of Galilee in the hill country of

Naphthalai, Shachem in the hill country of Ephraim, and Kiryav Arba that is Hebron in the hill country of

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