Latest / Lamp and Light Bible Reading Plan / August 22, 2026 - Joshua 14 & Proverbs 12:9-12

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August 22, 2026 - Joshua 14 & Proverbs 12:9-12 · Lamp and Light Bible Reading Plan

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Lamp and Light Bibleing Plan, where we are seeking to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, with God's word lighting the way.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Josiah Smith, joined by Tyler Sanborn.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Today is Saturday, August 22nd, 2026.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Listen intently to God's written word, Joshua 14.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: These are the inheritances that the people of Israel received in the land of Canaan, which Eliazar, the priest, and Joshua the son of Nun, and the heads of the father's houses of the tribes of the people of Israel gave them to inherit.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Their inheritance was by lot, just as the Lord had commanded by the hand of Moses for the nine and one half tribes.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: For Moses had given an inheritance to the two and one half tribes beyond the Jordan, but to the Levites he gave no inheritance among them, for the people of Joseph were two tribes, Manasseh and Ephraim, and no portion was given to the Levites in the land, but only cities to dwell in with their pasture lands for their livestock and their substance.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: The people of Israel did as the Lord commanded Moses.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: They allotted the land.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Then the people of Judah came to Joshua at Gilgal, and Caleb, the son of Jephina, the Kizanite, said to him, You know what the Lord said to Moses, the man of God in Kadesh Barnea, concerning you and me?
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: I was forty years old when Moses, the servant of the Lord, sent me from Kadesh Barnea to spy out the land, and I brought him word again as it was in my heart.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: But my brothers who went up with me made the heart of the people melt, yet I wholly followed the Lord my God.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: And Moses swore on that day, saying, Surely the land on which your foot has trodden shall be an inheritance for you and your children forever, because you have wholly followed the Lord my God.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: And now, behold, the Lord has kept me alive, just as he said, these forty-five years since the time the Lord spoke this word to Moses.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: While Israel walked in the wilderness, and now, behold, I am this day eighty five years old.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: I am still as strong today as it was in the day that Moses sent me.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: My strength now is as my strength was then, for war and for going and coming.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: So now give me this hill country of which the Lord spoke on that day, for you heard on that day how the Anakim were there, with great fortified cities.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: It may be that the Lord will be with me, and I shall dry them out, just as the Lord said.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Then Joshua blessed him, and he gave Hebron to Cake Caleb, the son of Jephina, for an inheritance.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore Hebron became the inheritance of Caleb, the son of Jephana, the Kazanite to this day, because he wholly followed the Lord, the God of Israel.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now the name of Hebron formerly was Kiriath Arbah.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Arba was the greatest man among the Anakim, and the land had rest from war.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Proverbs twelve verses nine through twelve.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: Better to be lowly and have a servant than to play the great man and lack bread.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: Whoever is righteous has regard for the life of his beast, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits lacks sense.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: Whoever is wicked covets the spoil of evil evildoers, but the root of the righteous bears fruit.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Joshua 14 is a kind of continuation of Joshua 13 with the land allotments and who's getting what land and where.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, you've got the different tribes that were on the other side of the Jordan that wanted to stay there because it was great land for their livestock, great pasture lands, even as it's reiterated here in Joshua 14.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: But specifically, a lot of the chapter focuses on Caleb.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it takes us back to Caleb being really one of the only spies that comes back and is trusting in the Lord that is saying uh and really speaking to the people of Israel, and specifically Moses, with a great confidence in God that he will protect them and he will preserve them.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so he even talks about how he wholly followed the Lord.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: He wholly trusted in the Lord, and as a result, there was this promise of this future land allotment, this future inheritance that he would be given.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so here we see his faithfulness being rewarded, his trust in the Lord being rewarded, his obedience, even being rewarded.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: So verse 13, Joshua blessed him and he gave Hebron to Caleb, the son of Jephanah, for an inheritance.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, Hebron became the inheritance of Caleb, the son of Jephana the Kizanite to this day, because he wholly followed the Lord, the God of Israel.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: So even here we see the principle of God rewarding righteousness, of God rewarding obedience, God rewarding faith and trust and following him.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's what Caleb did.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: He wholly followed the Lord.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: And as a result, the Lord blessed him.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, Joshua, on behalf of the Lord, blesses him by giving them Hebron, this land, this allotment, just as a way of even acknowledging his faithfulness and his obedience ultimately to the Lord.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, something that's interesting to me, PJ, is the land that Caleb inherits is a land, as we see at the final verse of this chapter, a land that had rest from war.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: And the one of the fears that the people of Israel had was to enter the land of Canaan and then be destroyed, to be eliminated in battle, in war.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: They said that they were grasshoppers in the eyes of these inhabitants, the other uh the unfaithful spies who went out and surveyed the land and said, We're gonna we're gonna take L's left, right, and center.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna lose to these people because of their size, their stature, their uh, their their power in this land.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: And uh Joshua and Caleb come back to your point and they say, The Lord will give us these people.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: He's promised us, so we have we have a sure victory in hand if we trust in God.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: And uh as a result, we see here um the land that is given to Caleb is has rest from war, has a lack of war.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that was the big concern from the people of Israel going into the land.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: We will be eliminated.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: But here for Caleb, it's a rest from conflict, a rest from war, and and what a blessing that is to him and to uh to his family.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: Now, as we look over to the Proverb today, Proverbs uh chapter 12, verses nine through twelve, uh I I have in my margin of my Bible that the humble have help, uh, and this comparison, the lavish uh and lacking.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: And uh the verse nine opens us today, and we we look to see be a person, a person who is lowly and that has help.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's better to be lowly and have a servant than to play the great man and lack bread.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm I'm imagining this great man, Pastor Josiah, someone who is an actor, someone who's playing the part, playing someone who he actually is not.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: And as a result, I was commenting, you see the guy with uh the the big fancy house or the big fancy wardrobe or the the toys or whatever this person may have that might make him great, but in this concluding uh section of verse nine, he he lacks bread to to go and boast or put on this front and and be lacking because of the the ways that you're presenting yourself to play the great man.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, it's it's all a facade, right?
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's like uh it's like the people that own really nice cars, they've got a really nice house, they wear really nice clothes, uh, but they purchase all those things on credit cards and loans, and they have no money, right?
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: They're broke.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's that's the picture here, right?
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Better to be lowly.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh people don't know you.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: You're not flashy, you're not driving down the street with a car that everyone notices, right?
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Better to be lowly, someone that, you know, from our vantage point isn't is nothing to balk at, uh, but to have a servant.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: There's a sense of you have resources, you're you're taking care of your house, you have the means even to pay someone else to to help you and come alongside you, than to play the great man, right?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: So you can look great, you can dress great, you can uh appear great, but you know what, what's the the end of that person?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they lack bread, they don't they don't have the basic necessities that they need because they're so worried about what people think out there that they're not taking care of what what needs to be done in here, right?
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: In here as in their home.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: They're not taking care of their home, they're not taking care of their household, they're they're not feeding themselves or their family.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, in this proverb and this example, right?
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's the whole thing.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's the whole thing is smoke and mirrors, it's a facade.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and and to be honest, our hearts are not very far from this, I would say, Tyler.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: It may not be this dramatic, you know, we may not be sacrificing uh a meal uh to purchase you know some sort of outfit that that we would want people to see or know.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: But nevertheless, like I think at the way that we can often play the great man, whether it's with even cloaked in spirituality or maybe it is more materially driven, we can do this.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: We we can pretend like we're something that we're not when all along internally, you know, inside the house or inside our heart, we're bankrupt and we lack the basic necessities.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's something that we need to really wrestle with.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what Proverbs says.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I love Proverbs.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, where else is gonna just really cut through all the smoke and say, hey, you it's better for you to be someone that no one knows, you're not noticeable, right?
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: You're lowly, average Joe blending in, and have a servant.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing fantastic about you than to play the great man and lack bread.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like you can go out there, you can buy the car, you can get the loan, you can max out the credit card, you you can present that to the world, but there's there's a cost to it, there's a folly behind it, and that's the warning here in Proverbs 12, 9.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, what what a great section to just feast on a couple nuggets.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like you bite into the nugget, and it's like, imagine in your mouth, it just like multiplies into this enormous bite.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I I love the the short sections that we get to uh work through throughout the rest of the Proverbs, and we just take a handful of verses and and find where they fit.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: I was imagining this morning taking a jigsaw uh puzzle piece and and trying to identify in the thousand pieces, if that's the thousand aspects of your life, where does this piece fit into my life?
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: Where does it connect?
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: How does this apply to me and and what I'm doing, uh, where my heart is, where my mind is today?
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a uh a good exercise for us as we seek to look to the proverbs, apply the wisdom to our lives that is just overflowing out of this book, and uh and and see where it fits.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: So uh continuing on in our our proverb today, uh another verse that stood out to me is uh verse 10 whoever is righteous has regard for the life of his beast, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: And typically we would look as at mercy and say, this is this is a good thing.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: We want mercy, we want to receive it.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: And it's often more challenging to extend mercy to others um than it is to receive it for ourselves.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: But uh, what could this look like, PJ, as we look to the mercy of the wicked being cruel?
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: I was trying to find um an analogy or a way to apply that.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, maybe someone who is a brute, or maybe someone who is um maybe heavy-handed, or uh someone who is uh has has this expectation of of perfection, and any small mistake is like snappy at the person who would be uh falling short in some way.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: But how can we look at verse 10 and and what do we make of this?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I I think mercy of the wicked, I mean, part of that is there's a there's a wrong definition of mercy, right?
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, someone who's not righteous, who has no fear of the Lord, is is not going to think of justice and equity in the categories of biblical wisdom.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: So already we're operating under a different sort of definition of mercy than, of course, the mercy that God shows us.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so this may be silly, but the first thing that came to my mind was uh Thanos from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, his whole thing uh was he wanted to be merciful, right?
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because there was you know too much population, the worlds uh were overcrowded with and under-resourced.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so by getting rid of half of all of life, if you are familiar with these movies, his whole point was this is an act of mercy.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: This is I'm actually helping.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm removing the strain and I'm removing the the hurdles and the barriers, and uh they'll know nothing.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think a line he says is they'll know nothing but clear skies and full bellies, right?
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: So uh literally by murdering half of all life in in this context, in the multiverse, uh, he is categorizing that and defining it as mercy.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: So it's people with this twisted idea of uh wanting to accomplish something uh in a very misguided kind of way.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and of course, here the the opposite of that is the righteous person who has regard for even the life of his beast.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what's interesting about that is that that's a that's a mosaic law category, right?
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: There are actually laws that govern how you are to handle uh your beast, your animals, uh, even the animals of your neighbor.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so a righteous person has regard for even the life of his animal and does things in a way and has a particular kind of care uh even for the animals that are intended to serve him, that were, you know, the oxen that helped him plow his fields and things like that.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so it's just an interesting proverb, something for us to really think through and wrestle with.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: But I love verse 11 where it says, Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits lacks sense.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: And in a sense, this is a kind of a reiteration of verse 9, uh, but repackaged in a different way, right?
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because we have uh playing the great man and they lack bread, right?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: So we have someone who's lowly and has a servant.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: This the indication, of course, is that they are working their fields, they're taking care of their crops or their animals or their home and all the kinds of stuff.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then someone over here is doing something frivolous and foolish.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: They're playing the great man and they're lacking bread.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now, here's another parallel way to say that whoever works his land will have plenty of bread.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: But he who follows worthless pursuits lacks sense.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: So a slightly different angle from verse nine.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, this one's more about diligence and uh even choosing the right things to focus on.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now, just by way of humor, what I thought about with this verse is those sort of like, you know, social media skits where it's like uh from the perspective of a wife who's uh cooking dinner to prepare or to host some guests, and then it's like a husband off to the side, like up in a tree.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, like a side quest, trimming trimming the tree branches, like doing something that's just completely like unrelated to the task at hand, is not picking up around the house.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: They're out like mowing the yard or uh you know, trimming the bush in the front that they haven't been for the last couple of weeks.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so those are affectionately called side quests, right?
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's this whole trope about uh men specifically uh when there are guests coming over or something needs to be done, that we go and do something else.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's kind of what's going on here.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: Whoever follows worthless pursuits lacks sense.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: Clearly, there's a there's an order of operations, if you will.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like if my wife's making dinner and we've got guests coming over, I need to make sure that the house is clean, not that the you know, it's not time to organize on my tree.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: Your sock drawer.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's uh there's an order of operations.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: There's something that needs my attention more immediately and more prudently.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's kind of the whole thing here.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: He who follows worthless pursuits lacks sense.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: We got to know when when to put our mind and our hand to something.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, in this context, it's work.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: We got to put our mind to things that need to get done.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, whoever works his land, whoever is uh dutiful in their responsibilities, then uh there's gonna be a sense in which, okay, that they're gonna have plenty of bread, they're gonna have what they need, that their household's in order, they're taking care of what they need to, but those who are off running around chasing worthless things, uh, they lack sense.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: And if that's you, if your husband listening and uh your wife is often like, Why are you doing that?
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: Why are you in the garage uh reorganizing your toolbox when we've got you know our parents coming over for dinner?
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe this, uh maybe this is a proverb for you.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: So lovingly, I'll say that.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: Gently.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, gently.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: And uh our final verse um in our section today, uh, verse 12 Whoever is wicked covets the spoil of evildoers, but the root of the righteous bears fruit.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I I can't help but think about my students that I that I had uh when I was working in juvenile corrections, and often they would tell the stories of their um of their illegal pursuits on the outs, as they would call it.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a lot of comparison, a lot of uh uh a lot of coveting based on different respects or different um items that you would have that you would flaunt or different vehicles that you would have or fast money that you'd be able uh to get via means of robbery or shoplifting or whatever, whatever the case was when my students would be telling me of how they got into my classroom in juvenile corrections.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: And um, this verse that says, Whoever is wicked covets the spoil of evildoers and those who are going about making a living for themselves in a way that's illegal or evil in in our world and our society, those people, and I've seen it firsthand, they were coveting, longing for the things that they didn't have that other people had uh through unrighteous means, whether it was um shoplifting or otherwise.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: So uh a way that we can look at that is look at work as a good thing, honest work, hard work, uh a day's nine to five, or if you're working for yourself and or if you're a business owner, whatever your timeline is, it's good to sweat.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's good to work hard in a way that is honoring to the Lord, that is legal in our world today, in our in our state here in in Idaho.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: But that the the fruit of that is is pleasing to the Lord.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: When you go about earning a living that is um that is upright in the and the means of doing that, it's full of honesty and integrity of you're a person of high character in the way that you go about uh earning your dollar, there's uh there's fruit that comes from that.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: And the Lord is pleased to see you working in a way that is pleasing to him and and considerate uh to other people.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you have employees, maybe you have people that are um the direct uh recipients of the product or the service that you're providing.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's good, uh, it's good and righteous to work in a way that is uh considerate of others and and is focused on the Lord and pleasing him.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: And hopefully, as we go through the Proverbs, the the definition, if you can think back, that I gave in the opening sermon of our Proverbs series of wisdom, skilled living in God's created order.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully you're seeing that kind of take shape through the Proverbs.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: And we're talking about work, we're talking about the way that we live our lives, the way that we use our words, I mean, so many different things.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, you can see that the fear of the Lord leads to living in God's world, God's way, and of course, living skillfully in God's created order.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the hope, that's the desire for our time in really all of God's words, but specifically here in the Proverbs.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you so much for joining us today on the Lamp and Light Bible Reading Podcast.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: For more information about Compass Bible Church South Valley, visit Compass Bible SV dot org.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: Keep reading, keep growing.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: God's word is a lamp to your feet and a light to your path.