Latest / Lamp and Light Bible Reading Plan / May 6, 2026 - Leviticus 18 & Psalm 97

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May 6, 2026 - Leviticus 18 & Psalm 97 · Lamp and Light Bible Reading Plan

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Lamp and Light Bybreeding 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 Wednesday, May 6th, 2026.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Listen intently to God's written word.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Leviticus 18.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, I am the Lord your God.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: You shall not walk in their statutes.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: You shall follow my rules and keep my statutes and walk in them.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: I am the Lord your God.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: You shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: If a person does them, he shall live by them.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: I am the Lord.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: None of you shall approach any one of his close relatives to uncover his nakedness.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: I am the Lord.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father, which is the nakedness of your mother.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: She is your mother.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: You shall not uncover her nakedness.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's wife, it is your father's nakedness.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: You shall not uncover the nakedness of your sister, your father's daughter, or your mother's daughter, whether brought up in the family or in another home.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: You shall not uncover the nakedness of your son's daughter or of your daughter's daughter, for their nakedness is your own nakedness.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's wife's daughter, brought up in your father's family, since she is your sister.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's sister, she is your father's relative.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: You shall not uncover the nakedness of your mother's sister, for she is your mother's relative.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's brother, that is, you shall not approach his wife, she is your aunt.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: You shall not uncover the nakedness of your daughter-in-law, she is your son's wife.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: You shall not uncover her nakedness.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: You shall not uncover the nakedness of your brother's wife, it is your brother's nakedness.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: You shall not uncover the nakedness of a woman and of her daughter, and you shall not take her son's daughter or her daughter's daughter to uncover her nakedness.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: They are relatives, it is depravity.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: And you shall not take a woman as a rival wife to her sister, uncovering her nakedness while her sister is still alive.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: You shall not approach a woman to uncover her nakedness while she is in her menstrual uncleanness, and you shall not lie sexually with your neighbor's wife, and so make yourself unclean with her.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: You shall not give any of your children to offer them to Mulloch, and so profane the name of your God.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: I am the Lord.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: You shall not lie with a male as with a woman, it is an abomination.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: You shall not lie with any animal until make yourself unclean with it, neither shall any woman give herself to an animal to lie with it.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: It is perversion.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Do not make yourselves unclean by any of these things, for by all these the nations I am driving out before you have become unclean, and the land became unclean, so that I punished the iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: But you shall keep my statutes and my rules, and do none of these abominations, either the native or the stranger who sojourns among you.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: For the people of the land who were before you did all of these abominations, so that the land became unclean.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Lest the land vomit you out when you make it unclean, as it vomited out the nation that was before you.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: For everyone who does any of these abominations, the persons who do them shall be cut off from among their people.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: So keep my charge never to practice any of these abominable customs that were practiced before you, and never to make yourselves unclean by them.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: I am the Lord your God.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: Clouds and thick darkness are all around him.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: Righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Fire goes before him and burns up his adversaries all around.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: His lightnings light up the world, the earth sees and trembles, the mountains melt like wax before the Lord, before the Lord of all the earth.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: The heavens proclaim his righteousness, and all the peoples see his glory.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: All worshipers of images are put to shame, who make their boast in worthless idols.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: Worship Him, all you gods.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: Zion hears and is glad, and the daughters of Judah rejoice because of your judgments, O Lord.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: For you, O Lord, are most high over all the earth.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: You are exalted far above all gods.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: O you who love the Lord, hate evil.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: He preserves the lives of his saints, he delivers them from the hand of the wicked.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: Light is sown for the righteous, and joy for the upright in heart.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous, and give thanks to his holy name.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now we're kind of reaching a shift in the book of Leviticus.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now I want to give you two categories.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if we've talked about it quite this way yet on the podcast, but two categories of laws to kind of make sense of things that we have read so far in Leviticus and things that we are now starting to read.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now, those laws are ceremonial, or perhaps you could better say it, uh, ritual laws concerning being ritually impure or ritual uncleanness.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's a lot of what we just read, Tyler, where uh bodily discharges, food that you consume, um, all of those different things, even leprosy, skin conditions, and the ritual uncleanness was most uh especially connected to the tabernacle, not being not being able to go there to offer sacrifices, not touching any of the holy things that were consecrated with holy oil.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: So the ritual uncleanness represented a sort of ritual separation.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now, those things that were detailed in previous chapters were not necessarily sinful.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: They were in a different category of law.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: So when we talked about the bodily discharge specifically, where it talks about lying with your wife, uh, of course, sex within the context of marriage is a good and godly thing.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: So that's not sinful in and of itself, but it did cause ritual impurity, ritual uncleanness, which was separation from the tabernacle specifically.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now, here we're gonna see a shift where the laws focus explicitly on morality.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, in this sense, to think about it clearly, you can think of these laws as things that are absolutely forbidden.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Under no circumstances can you do these things.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: So, in the previous law of ritual impurity, yeah, of course, having a physical relationship with your spouse is something that is honoring to the Lord, actually, if done in the proper context for the right reasons, loving your wife, loving your husband, things like that.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: But nevertheless, it would still cause some level of ritual uncleanness.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Morality, on the other hand, these laws concerning morality, and maybe you could even say biblical ethics, uh, there is no circumstance under which you should do these things.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: And in Leviticus 18 specifically, uh, sometimes it's a it's a prohibition, as in you can't do this, or sometimes it's more positive where it's you need to do this.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: So even in chapter 19, it's gonna talk about loving your neighbor as yourself.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: But in chapter 18, it seems to be about sexual immorality, and it's it's a forbidden.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Don't do this.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: There is no exception.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's not it's not like having a physical relationship with your spouse where that is good and godly and it leads to being fruitful and multiplying as God commanded in the garden, uh, but neither, nevertheless, still causes separation.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: No, this is something that is objectively wrong, it should never be done.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: There is nothing redeem redemptive about this, right?
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh part of the reason that we can see that shift is how chapter 18 is bracketed specifically.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: So it starts uh really in verse two speak to the people of Israel and say to them, I am the Lord your God.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then if we look at verse 30, it says, So keep my charge, never, again, there's that sense of never, never to practice under any circumstances any of these abominable customs that were practiced before you, and never to make yourselves unclean by them.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: I am the Lord your God.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: So we have at the beginning of this chapter, verse two, I am the Lord your God.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: At the end, I am the Lord your God.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's this sense of which God is saying, because of who I am, because of my holiness, you will not do these things.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: This is a violation of God's standards for specifically in Leviticus 18 sexual ethics.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it lists all kinds of scenarios, uh, all kinds of ways, uh, perhaps that you might be tempted, or the Israelites specifically might be tempted to engage in a sexual relationship.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it even gives gives all these branched sort of familial relationships about daughter-in-laws and aunts and things like that.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it says, Don't do it.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's not honoring to the Lord, and that's why God starts with I am the Lord your God.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: He ends with I am the Lord your God, and he brackets all of these commands very explicitly uh to prohibit these sort of inappropriate sexual relations.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now we have all kinds of examples.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Again, we just listed a few.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we have perhaps famously, and I just say famously for um, I'm thinking of people that would debate and have a problem with the Bible saying that homosexuality uh is wrong.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And Leviticus 18 comes up in that conversation quite a bit because in verse 22 it says, You shall not lie with a male as with a woman.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: It is an abomination.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then even in verse 23, you shall not lie with any animal.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: So bestiality is forbidden, homosexuality is explicitly forbidden.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, they're gonna try to make all kinds of arguments about how that's not a man with a man, that there's a man with young slave boys, and they're gonna put all kinds of things in the text other than what it says, which is uh don't do it, don't lie with a man as with a woman.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: It is an abomination.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: So it couldn't be more clear to me.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: And even in verse 23, it's giving other, it's talking categories, it's not uh all of these different nuances of power, uh, differentials and uh older and younger and abusive sort of relationships in that context.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's just saying, if you're a man, don't lie with a man.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, by uh implication, if you're a woman, don't lie with a woman, it is an abomination.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're a man or a woman, you don't lie with an animal, it is a perversion.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: So we see all of that here in Leviticus 18.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so again, all that's bracketed by this reminder of who God is.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: I am the Lord your God.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: And what's so fascinating, Tyler, is how he basically is saying the nation that you've come from and the nation that you're going into, they both practice these things, they both do these things.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: Egypt and Canaan, uh, they sacrifice to Mulloch, they are engaged in perverse sexual relationships, perhaps men lying with men, or uh men lying with daughter-in-laws, or men lying with their father's wives, or you know, or whatever, right?
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Which I guess would be their mother.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and all of that, right?
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: So he's saying, okay, you're leaving Egypt, you were surrounded by that for hundreds of years, you're going into a land, you're gonna be surrounded by that again.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: And God is saying, don't adopt it, don't do it.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: You're going into this land.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it even says in verse 27, for the people of the land who were before you did all of these abominations so that the land became unclean.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: And even the word vomited.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: I know I kind of saw you tense a little bit while I was reading that.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, vomiting has a new meaning in the year 2026 for me.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh it's more frequent and all around, it seems.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: And when I was reading this text, I'm I'm imagining I'm imagining my children and uh them being sick, and I'm imagining the land uh just spewing out the inhabitants and and thinking like Israel, if this is you, you also will be ejected from the land.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: And uh ultimately they do they do get ejected.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the the destruction of Jerusalem does does happen.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: There uh Nebuchadnezzar comes in in the Babylonian captivity, but they do return.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: But yes, nonetheless, the the imagery here kind of is unsettling to your point, PJ.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I mean a little again, it ends in verse 30.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: So keep my charge never to practice any of these abominable customs that were practiced before you.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: So these surrounding pagan nations that do not worship God, that do not honor them as their God, don't recognize him as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they've done these things.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: They've given themselves over to these.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: They have been engaged in perverse practices.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: But for you, God says, my people have nothing to do with this.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so you can kind of even feel the shift in the language between the ritual impurity and this is more of the moral or ethical impurity because it says the same word, unclean, that's used here in 18, chapter 18 in Leviticus, but it's again more closely connected to a sinful sort of ethical morality rather than just simply uh a more religious impurity.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: So, of course, there's some overlap, they're not exactly clean categories, but I want you to see that there is a difference, and um, there is something here to just pay attention to.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna continue to see that in chapter 19.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna talk about that.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, then it kind of even details punishments in chapter 20, punishment for child sacrifice.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's the reference in chapter 18 about Moloch, uh, punishments for sexual immorality.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so so the other ritual impurities, we don't see punishments listed for those.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because again, it's it's it's more focused on uh a ritual sort of cleanliness.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is more ethical.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so you could put it, it's not exactly this way, but just to conceive of it, maybe by an analogy, you could put it more ritual impurity is kind of external, and uh, this is more internal, right?
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, this is more what's your heart?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: What are you after?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: What are you engaged in?
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so ritually impure, you you could do that innocently and in a thousand different ways, right?
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: Just as the prime example, you can have a physical relationship with your wife, which is a good thing, not a sinful thing, uh, and yet still be impure.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: But here, this is a willful, sort of defiant act of God that breaks his moral command, that breaks his ethic that he has given to the nation of Israel.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: Don't do this, don't participate in this, never.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: There is no circumstance under which this is okay.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, we're gonna see that this unfortunately is what the nation of Israel gets entangled with, specifically with the Canaanites.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: They start adopting their practices, they start kind of adopting their sexual ethic, and it leads to a lot of pain, a lot of uh just hardship in the in the nation of Israel as a whole.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so we'll continue to read about that.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: But just notice that shift, ritual impurity, that this is moral or ethical impurity, and there's a distinction there, uh, and there's specifically consequences and punishments listed for the moral side of things and not for the ritual side of things.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: Now, PJ, as we transition to Psalm 97, uh, I can't help but imagine as we look in the first couple of verses here, uh, the God who reigns and who makes his home uh in the tabernacle, as we've been reading uh in Leviticus, and as we uh think forward to the construction of the temple, my mind goes to 1 Kings chapter 8, uh, when Solomon is dedicating the temple to the Lord, and the the thick smoke is is flowing out of the temple, and uh righteousness, it says in verse 2, righteousness and justice are the foundation uh of his throne.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: And uh we we long for rulers in this world, uh, as we see a lot of non-examples of rulers who do not rule with righteousness and they aren't ruling with justice.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: We look forward to uh the time when when Allah is made right.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: We get the opportunity for those who are here, those who are here at the time, um, that get to live under the the reign of the Lord Jesus Christ in Jerusalem uh when his rule, his per perfection is uh is made an example of in uh in the earth once again.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I've had a question for you um as we were discussing this before we started recording, um, what it what it looks like for mountains to melt like wax before the Lord.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: Now, when the Lord does return, when his feet touch on the Mount of Olives, um all will be made low.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: But what are we looking at here in verse five, PJ?
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think it's just uh it's a poetic way of describing the greatness of the Lord.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: The mountains melt like wax before the Lord, before the Lord of all the earth.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so mountains typically in the Bible represents a place of power, uh probably most especially because of its association with Mount Sinai, where the Lord speaks, and there's a fire and cloud and the thunderous voice and all that kind of stuff, and even the warning and the danger of getting too close to the mountain or touching the mountain.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so mountains were held in in high regard, uh, and they represented again power and might.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but when compared to the Lord who reigns, uh, mountains are nothing.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: They'll they'll melt like wax before the Lord, before the Lord of all the earth.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: So this is kind of even an indication uh of everything in creation is going to submit itself to the Lord.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: He is above it, he's greater than it, he's more powerful, he's more majestic.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: However great and mighty you might think of a mountain to be, or whatever other sort of thing that you would put in that category, Psalm 97 says, God is greater, God is better.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, everything before the Lord melts in comparison to him.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I love even the connection from Leviticus 18 to Psalm 97 here in verse 10, where it says, Oh, you who love the Lord hate evil.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: So it wasn't just these sort of prohibitions as if God was putting shackles on the nation of Israel and all the poor Israelites that can't have freedom of sexual expression or something like that.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: No, this is something where God desired them not just to stay away from a line, uh, but to love what he loved and hate what he hates.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, because even in the next chapter in Leviticus, Leviticus 19, it's going to talk about loving your neighbor.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so God cares about what we love, he cares about what we hate.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: We talked about this, of course, in connection to Hebrews, uh, where Jesus is uh said to be the righteous king who loves righteousness and hates wickedness.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we quoted this verse actually in that sermon from a few weeks back, uh, I guess a couple months ago now.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but in verse 10, right, oh you who love the Lord hate evil.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: He preserves the lives of his saints, he delivers them from the hand of the wicked.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: So, again, just a great connection here of uh God gives these commands in the Leviticus.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: They were to love what God loved, hate it what God hated.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: But unfortunately, those categories in our flesh can easily get conflated, can get confused, can get blurry, where we begin to love what God hates and hate what God loves.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's something that we need to watch out for in our own hearts.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: Woe to those who call good, evil, and evil good is a warning from the scriptures.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: So, some great connections here.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: God is so great, He is uh majestic.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: Even in verse 6, the heavens proclaim his righteousness, and all the people see his glory.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now, all worshipers of images, Egypt, Canaan, that's Leviticus 18 again, are put to shame who make their boast and worthless idols.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: Worship him, all you gods.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: Only God is worthy of worship, and we are to love what God loves and hate what God hates.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: And what a what a great thing to do to love what the Lord our God loves.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: And we can rejoice in his commandments that he would show us the ways that please him and that honor him.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: We're not left to try to figure it out on our own.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: He has given us a roadmap as to how to how to please him, how to bring honor to his name.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: And for that, we are thankful because as a result, through the power of the Spirit and the power of the word that he has given us, we are being made more like his son as we pursue after obedience.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: And we are uh trying to day by day, in the power of the spirit, um, step into more and more righteousness as we seek to make God's name uh known, make disciples in South Valley, and also uh to just shine the light of Christ uh in the relationships that we have and find joy in that.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: There is great joy and peace in following after the Lord and drawing near to him.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: The heavens proclaim his righteousness, verse six says, and all the peoples see his glory.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you so much for joining us today on the Lamp and Light Bible Reading Podcast.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: For more information about Compass Bible Church South Valley, visit compass Bible SV.org.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: Keep reading, keep growing.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: God's word is a lamp to your feet and a light to your path.