Latest / Lamp and Light Bible Reading Plan / April 22, 2026 - Leviticus 6 & Psalm 88

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April 22, 2026 - Leviticus 6 & Psalm 88 · Lamp and Light Bible Reading Plan

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Lamp and Light Bible 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.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Josiah Smith, joined by Tyler Sanborn.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: Today is Wednesday, April 22nd, 2026.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: Here's a quick summary of Leviticus 6.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Leviticus 6 opens with instructions about restitution for those who commit fraud and theft and other things against their neighbor specifically, and just the way in which they are supposed to provide just the recourse for these things, if they're being dishonest, or if they're uh their security arrangements or robbery or oppression, and how they are to restore these things, and this instructions that bring that to a sense of reconciliation.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: And then the chapter shifts somewhat dramatically to focusing instead of on the whole nation of Israel and individual Israelites that are bringing these five different offerings that we've been talking about from Leviticus 1 through chapter 5.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: And now it shifts to the perspective of the priests.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: And the priests are to do certain things with certain sacrifices, even the burnt offering that they are to do in the evening, uh, and have the fire burning until morning, what they're supposed to be doing in terms of in disposing of a fatty ash remaining after the morning, different instructions for the role of the priests when they are operating in their priestly capacity to fulfill their priestly duty.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: So that is Leviticus six.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Listen intently to God's written word, Psalm eighty-eight.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: O Lord, God of my salvation, I cry out day and night before you.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Let my prayer come before you, incline your ear to my cry, for my soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to Sheol.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: I am counted among those who go down to the pit.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: I am a man who has no strength, like one set loose among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, like those whom you remember no more, for they are cut off from your hand.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: You have put me in the depths of the pit, in the regions dark and deep, your wrath lies heavy upon me, and you overwhelm me with all your waves.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: You have caused my companions to shun me, you have made me a whore to them.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: I am shut in so that I cannot escape, my eye grows dim through sorrow.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Every day I call upon you, O Lord, I spread out my hands to you.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: Do you work wonders for the dead?
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Do the departed rise up to praise you?
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: Is your steadfast love declared in the grave, or your faithfulness in abaden?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Are your wonders known in the darkness or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: But I, O Lord, cry to you, in the morning my prayer comes before you.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: O Lord, why do you cast my soul away?
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you hide your face from me?
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Afflicted and close to death from my youth up, I suffer your terrors, I am helpless.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Your wrath has swept over me.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Your dreadful assaults destroy me.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: They surround me like a flood all day long.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: They close in on me together.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: My companions have become darkness.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Tyler, today I think it'll be helpful for us to actually kind of camp out on Psalm 88.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this Psalm kind of has me thinking about just conversations that I've had over the years with different kinds of people who process grief and hardship in different kinds of ways.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: And uh just even sometimes the frustration that I have felt and I know that others have expressed when you're you're sharing something that is difficult, and you're sharing something that you feel like is heavy just on your heart, uh, and the response seems somewhat dismissive, if I can say it that way, with just the yeah, but but the Lord is good.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, I believe wholeheartedly that the Lord is good.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: But there are times and and there are seasons when we can affirm, and as we always should affirm, that the Lord is good while also acknowledging great sorrow and great struggle that people are enduring, or maybe that we ourselves are enduring.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I would say Psalm 88 is the psalm for those people that yes would affirm, especially theologically, they would affirm that the Lord is good, but uh their experience maybe in the moments is one of great darkness, one of great sadness, and that that that does not diminish the reality that God is good.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think it actually kind of gives voice to just the reality of sorrow, the reality of suffering.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I would say Psalm 88 kind of balances us and forces us to acknowledge difficulty, to acknowledge suffering, and not to try to dismiss it or tuck it neatly away in a box in the back room.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we we need to wade into it and be willing to express it and put words to it, just like we see here in Psalm 88.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's a a temptation for us to to see people that might be struggling and expressing their struggles and in an ongoing manner.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes in our timeline, our minds, we have a a very short and narrow field of view for suffering to take place or or internal distress to to be dealt with, and then we just need to move on.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's okay, time to time to get on with your life, time to keep going.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think a great reminder for us for this song from this psalm, excuse me, is to be um friends and and brothers and sisters who are coming alongside those who may feel really alone, who who might be feeling exactly what this uh psalmist is is expressing in our text today, and no one wants to be that friend where you're being shunned, no one is coming to your aid, no one is supporting you.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 8 is kind of frightening.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you have caused my companions to shun me, you have made me a horror to them.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: No, people are running away from um from this man, and at times we need people to be running to us in our aid.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we want our space, we kind of want to suffer in silence, if you will.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I think this is a great encouragement for us to make our our heart known to God and our hearts known to our brothers and sisters, so that they might come alongside of us and and bolster us and point our eyes back to God.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: On a few occasions here in this psalm, the prayers are going up, verses one and two, verses uh nine and thirteen.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: There's this prayer, prayerful acknowledgement of the distress that is going on in the psalmist's life.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: And there's this confidence in God that you are hearing me.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: You are hearing me when I'm calling out to you every day.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: I call upon you, Lord, I cry out to you.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: In the morning, my prayer comes before you.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: There's an obedience from the psalmist to continue to bring his requests and his heart and his heaviness to the Lord, despite how he's feeling, or despite the lack of support that he's feeling from those closest to him.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and one of the things that makes Psalm 88 unique is we've been in the Psalms now for a couple months since we started reading through them together in January.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: And most often, the the way that you're going to see a psalm structured is it starts with a sense of despair.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: My eyes grow dim from waiting on God.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: My throat is parched from crying out.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm thinking of Psalm 69, and but then he ends and he says, I will praise you.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: I will praise you.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so we see this sort of movement in the majority of the psalms where there's just a great sense of anguish, a great sense of suffering that always seems to conclude uh with uh just triumphant praise and a sense of hopeful expectation that God will answer.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: And that is good, that is right, that is something that we should hold on to and cherish.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: But I think Psalm 88 is unique in that it doesn't end that way.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: There is no resolution.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, in some ways, uh it ends worse than it begins.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: It begins in verse 1, O Lord, God of my salvation, I cry out day and night before you.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: So it at least the way it begins is the sense of acknowledgement of who God is.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: But listen to how it ends in verse 18.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: My companions have become darkness.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: So the reason why I think this is unique and helpful is because, again, of that way that we can sometimes trivialize suffering and darkness and despair.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I think Psalm 88 uh just kind of leaves us in that dark place.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it leaves us with that sense of longing, with that sense of just continuing to cry out to the Lord.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it balances some of the other psalms, which of course start in much the same way, but always end with the sense of hope and the sense of praise and the sense of acknowledgement of who God is.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: But this psalm, it ends with this sort of like it just drops off a cliff, it feels like you have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: My companions have become darkness.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's something unique uh about the way that this psalm is composed, and I think it does, it does help give us a category for grief and suffering.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: And while you were talking, Tyler, I was thinking of Job's friends and how they actually started really well in the book of Job when things first start happening to him and the suffering really gets intense.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: I remember they sit with him, they sit with him.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: I forget how long, I want to say it was like at least a week.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, they sit with him in silence.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I think there's something powerful there.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's what I think of when I think of Psalm 88, just sitting in silence, recognizing the weightiness and the reality of sin and hurt and despair that can be associated with it.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: Now, of course, Job's friends, they don't they don't uh do too well right after that.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's when they start trying to give advice, they start saying things that are wrong, they start formulating bad theology, they start in many ways becoming a discouragement rather than someone that is a that is a help.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but Psalm 88 kind of gets us in that place of man, let let's let's wade into the sorrow, let's wade into the sadness.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, believing all along the way that God is sovereign, that he's providentially working all things together for good, uh, that he is so worthy of our praise, uh, but to have a category of theology that we see in the scriptures of just recognizing and sort of sitting in the reality of hurt and the reality of sorrow and suffering.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: And Psalm 88 does such a great job of giving us that category.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and to your point, you're drawing our attention, Pastor Josiah, to God's sovereignty and causing things to work together in our lives for his glory and for our good.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: I just notice here the psalmist is drawing his attention to the Lord and things that are happening in his life.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: You have put me in the depths of the pit.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: You have caused my companions to shun me.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: You have made me a horror to them.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you uh your wrath has swept over me.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: The psalmist is so aware of God's presence in his life, even through the tough the tough stuff, in the despair and in the hardships.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: There's um a a proper theology here of God, God working even through tough times, even through friends abandoning and um even loved ones, um, shunning.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: God is continually sovereign and it is intense sometimes.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: It is uh good even through those most difficult and excruciating times in your life to cast your mind and cast your heart to the Lord and acknowledge his love and his sovereignty in your life and all the while remembering this trial, this this season of my life, it may this season may even seem like years, it may even be years for some people, PJ.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: And people I I've seen in my life enduring the tough stuff of life, enduring the intense trials, um, it just encourages me.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're out there suffering well for the Lord and you're listening to this podcast, just please know that people are around you watching you and are being encouraged by the way that you are going to the Lord faithfully, depending on him for his strength and his endurance to sustain you.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: And the one who controls the waves in Exodus, um, controls the waves of the light in our in our lives and is um always present, even if um things get intense, even when things are um so blurry, our eyes are just growing dim from crying and weeping and so much sorrow.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, God is with us and we have this confidence in Him that in a moment the trial that we are in can be immediately stopped, potentially.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: God could immediately just end the trial as quickly as it came up from our perspective.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the God that we submit to and and love because he is completely in control of all creation, in control of all of our circumstances in the details of our lives.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I'm thinking of just two sort of simple takeaways from Psalm 88.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: One is kind of the one that we've been camping out on, which is don't dismiss or diminish the reality of suffering.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: We're so quick.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: We get uncomfortable with it, we don't know what to do with it, uh, we want it to go away.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so oftentimes we can we can be hurtful to people in that process of trying to sweep away their suffering again into the back room so that we don't have to deal with it or wade into it.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I think Psalm 88 is saying just just wade in.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, trust the Lord, yes, believe that he is good, but recognize that we are not to dismiss or diminish suffering.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the Lord, even I'm thinking of the gospels when when Jesus looks out onto the crowd and he is uh filled with compassion and uh just the sense of tears in his eyes, saying that they are like sheep without a shepherd.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, he uh longed for them uh to know him as their shepherd and to recognize uh the care that uh he had for them.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd say that's the first sort of takeaway from Psalm 88 is don't try to dismiss, don't try to diminish, don't downplay uh suffering.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: We don't want to glorify it.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: We don't want to, you know, sometimes sometimes people think that suffering puts you in some category of being uh unable to be understood, and you somehow know the deeper things in life because you've been through difficult things.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that that's not what what we're going for.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's not the point of all this.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: We're not going after uh Gnostic suffering, right?
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: Where we think we have special knowledge of the world because we've been through painful things.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but at the same time, uh, we don't want to diminish, we don't want to dismiss or downplay the reality of suffering that can plague so many people in a sinful and fallen world.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that's just the reality.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: Suffering is uh just another echo of um we're not at home and uh we're sojourners in this foreign land, we're oppressed by sin, and and sometimes that those things can be heavier than others, so don't downplay it.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing that I would say is that through this psalm, though there is no positive exclamation point, though it ends uh even darker than it begins, one of the threads that is consistent through it is prayer.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, just the psalmist continuing to go to the Lord, recognizing where their help comes from.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's how it starts.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: Oh Lord, God of my salvation, I cry out day and might and day and night.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: And this whole prayer is directed to the Lord.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: Verse 10 Do you work wonders for the dead?
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: Do the departed rise up to praise you?
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: Is your steadfast love declared in the grave?
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: Verse 13, but I, O Lord, cry to you, O Lord, why do you cast my soul away?
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's verse 14.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: So throughout this entire psalm, there is a consistent theme of heartache that drives prayer, suffering that drives dependence on the Lord.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so, though there isn't sunshine on the other side of this rainbow, at least not in Psalm 88, uh, what we do see is a consistent theme of going to the Lord.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: So, in the midst of our suffering, let us learn from this psalm, not to downplay it and not to dismiss it, but to bring it to the Lord.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: And this is what we see in the New Testament to cast all of our anxieties, all of our burdens, all of our cares on God, because he cares for us.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: And as a part of even recognizing that he cares for us, Leviticus and the priests, and what we read about even in Leviticus 6, of how the priests are to handle everything with such great care and such great specifications, all of that points forward to how God ultimately would help deal with our suffering and deal with our sorrow.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: He would send his son, who would become a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: He would send his son to take on our sorrow on the cross, to die, of course, for our sins, but as a part of our sin, it's not just the penalty that he was paying.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: He was also enduring the suffering and the sorrow.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: He was acquainted with grief.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: Truly, he has borne our sorrow and carried our grief, it says in Isaiah 53.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so I want you to find that great encouragement that the Lord not only sees us in our suffering, but that he did something about it.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: He sent his son to die on the cross, uh, that he truly understands, he sympathizes, he knows our suffering, he knows our weakness.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: Even Hebrews talks about how he became like us in every respect, except without sin, so that we have a great high priest who is able to sympathize with our weakness.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: So, Psalm 88, two lessons.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: Don't downplay suffering, wade into it with others, listen well, but also through that, let it drive you to a deeper dependence on the Lord through prayer, trusting that he truly is good and that he did do something and is doing something about your suffering, that he has provided Christ, he's provided eternal life, he provides the hope of our eternal inheritance in Christ that is kept in heaven for us.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: So may that just be an encouragement to you today from Psalm 88.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you so much for joining us today on the Lamp and Light Bible Reading Podcast.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: For more information about Compass Bible Church South Valley, visit compass bible s v dot org.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: Keep reading, keep growing.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: God's word is a lamp to your feet and a light to your path.