Latest / Lamp and Light Bible Reading Plan / August 29, 2026 - Joshua 20 & Proverbs 13:5-8

Transcript

August 29, 2026 - Joshua 20 & Proverbs 13:5-8 · Lamp and Light Bible Reading Plan

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: 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_00: I'm Josiah Smith, joined by Tyler Sanborn.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Today is Saturday, August 29th, 2026.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Listen intently to God's written word.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Joshua 20.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Then the Lord said to Joshua, Say to the people of Israel, Appoint the cities of refuge, of which I spoke to you through Moses, that the manslayer who strikes any person without intent, or unknowingly may flee there.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: They shall be for you a refuge from the avenger of blood.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: He shall flee to one of these cities, and shall stand at the entrance of the gate of the city, and explain his case to the elders of that city.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Then they shall take him into the city and give him a place, and he shall remain with them.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: And if the avenger of blood pursues him, they shall not give up the manslayer into his hand, because he struck his neighbor unknowingly, and did not hate him in the past.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: And he shall remain in that city until he has stood before the congregation for judgment, until the death of him who is high priest at the time.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Then the manslayer may return to his own town and his own home, to the town from which he fled.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: So they set apart Kadesh and Galilee in the hill country of Naphtali, and Shechem in the hill country of Ephraim, and Kirath Arbah, that is, Hebron, in the hill country of Judah, and beyond the Jordan, east of Jericho, they appointed Bezir in the wilderness on the Tabeland, from the tribe of Reuben, and Ramoth and Gilead from the tribe of Gad, and Gallan and Bashan from the tribe of Manasseh.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: These were the cities designated for all the people of Israel, and for the strangers sojourning among them, that anyone who killed a person without intent could flee there, so that he might not die by the hand of the avenger of blood, till he stood before the congregation.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: Proverbs thirteen, verses five through eight.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: The righteous hates falsehood, but the wicked brings shame and disgrace.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: Righteousness guards him whose way is blameless, but sin overthrows the wicked.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: One pretends to be rich, yet has nothing.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: Another pretends to be poor, yet has great wealth.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: The ransom of a man's life is his wealth, but a poor man hears no threat.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: In Joshua twenty, we have some interesting callbacks to certain laws that were established underneath the leadership of Moses.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, he's mentioned here in Joshua 20.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now remember, this comes on the heels of the completion of each tribe receiving their land allotment through that twofold way, one through lot, second through census.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: So lot determined location, census determined size.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: And after all of that, they've entered into Canaan.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: We've seen them receive the land that God had promised them, the land flowing with milk and honey.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now, essentially, they're they're getting to business, as it were, trying to establish and make sure that they follow the laws that were given through the prophet Moses.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's what we're doing here.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's what they're doing in Joshua 20 with the cities of refuge.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, it talks about the specific boundaries and even the specific cities that were to be cities of refuge.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: And these were just cities that were intended to uphold justice.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: If someone who is referred to as a manslayer accidentally took the life of another one, of another person, and was not intentionally trying to be murderous or anything like that, these could be places, cities for them to run to to actually find justice and find protection.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, if they went to the elders of the city and they were found guilty, then they would have ultimately been put to death.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: But if they were found innocent, they would have a place to stay and a place to remain safe until the high priest passed away.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then that would signify their time to go home and be among their people once again.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: So it's just another chapter that reiterates one Israel's commitment to uphold the law that was given through Moses, uh, one to have an orderly established society that's centered around uh really the Ten Commandments, which serves as the constitution, so to speak, of the nation of Israel.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: And here they are establishing these sanctuary cities to provide uh just ordered justice when something even as tragic as the accidental taking of a life was taking place within Israel's boundaries.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: And to make an immediate connection from our proverb section today in Joshua 20, we hop right into verse number five, where we read the righteous hates falsehood and a justice that happens when someone is is set free from false accusation, where they are proved innocent when indeed they are.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: And that is uh something that um that we see here in our text.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: The the righteous hates falsehood.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: If someone is being falsely accused, uh so-and-so murdered a man when it was an accident, when it was unintentional, that would be just for that person to uh to be set free.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: However, if they did do it with intent, uh that person would be would be a a murderer, and that person would would face the consequences of uh of their sin.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: So uh an immediate connection uh we see here, and I'm thinking about the second half of this section, verses seven and eight, and I I think about the people that live humbly, that the people that live uh live a life that maybe is below their means, or uh they live a life where they're not drawing uh too much attention uh to themselves.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I I really like verse eight.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: Verse eight in Proverbs 13, the ransom of a man's life is his wealth, but a poor man hears, hears no threat.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I'm my mind is drawn to Matthew uh 16, verse 26, which reads, Or what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: Now, people might be uh in a wicked way pursuing those of great wealth, of great influence that have uh maybe lots of material possessions in this world, and they might be more enticing to pursue in order to get some kind of uh some kind of ransom payment from them, a ransom purse, if you will.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but you're not gonna find that from someone who has not as much, someone who has a more um humble living.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: So that's not to say a person that has great things um uh is wrong or is sinful for having those things if they've if they've made an honest living for themselves.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but it does speak to the to the fact that they have more to lose and those people have um maybe uh a greater a greater pressure on themselves in a sense to manage that wealth and and to protect it or to protect themselves from those who would seek to to take that that wealth um in a sinful way.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's just interesting that the Proverbs were you know 13 chapters in, and there's been a lot of cyclical themes, one of which is of course being a sloth or a sluggard or being diligent, a hard worker, uh, and even the sense of costuming as uh a rich person.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: We've we've already read about that in chapter 12, and that's kind of talked about here again in 137.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: One pretends to be rich yet has nothing.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, another pretends to be poor yet has great wealth.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so again, there's this sense in which we we can put on um a false image of what we hope people perceive of us.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: We could even, as we talked about before, use our money in inappropriate ways to try to communicate some type of lavish lifestyle that we may or may not have, uh, but that's not something that's really meaningful.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, in verse eight, the ransom of a man's life is his wealth, but a poor man hears no threats.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: So verse eight really is is an interesting verse because it essentially talks about how the accumulation of wealth comes with it, some level of burden and responsibility.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, even here, there there's kind of this implication, potentially, of some sort of like, I don't know, lawsuit, or I mean, that's what the word ransom.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, there's there's some level of like on the hookness, so to speak, some extra level of burden that potentially is accompanied with wealth, but a poor man hears no threat.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a sense in which uh you can't leverage money or material possessions or wealth against someone who is quote unquote poor in the same way that you could someone who is wealthy.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this isn't just an affirmation of, you know, it's not saying that wealthy equals bad, poor equals good.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's just trying to communicate a general principle that sometimes the more money, material possessions, the more wealth you have, potentially the more, the more problems that you could experience, or even uh, you know, the the burden and the responsibility of caring for and managing those things uh that a poor person may not necessarily have to manage or experience.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: So it's just a really interesting way to kind of think about uh wealth, think about um how even sometimes again it can increases the burden and the responsibility in your in your life.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think the Proverbs speaks about wealth from all kinds of different angles.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: And while it may not be a bad thing, uh it certainly could be the case that the more you accumulate, the more difficult circumstances you might find yourself in.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what it says here.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: The ransom of a man's life is his wealth.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: So that could be more problems, could be lawsuits, could be uh even more opportunity to lose that wealth, right?
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't have any, you can't lose it.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's there's more, I mean, you know, as trite as it sounds, uh the Proverbs in a sense are really saying more money, more problems, right?
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like so there's uh some really interesting nuggets uh for us to chew on here when it comes to our wealth and our management of our money.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: And to conclude our time today, we look to verse six.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's the Lord's righteousness that guards those who who are seeking to be blameless uh before the Lord, and it's the righteousness of Christ that uh is is seen when we all will stand uh before God one day, and and one day we will only boast, we will only uh cry out and say, it's only because of the righteousness of Christ that's been applied uh to my life.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's his his declaration that I can stand before uh God the Father today and and and stand in a way that is um upright with humility, but uh in a way that has a confidence that is is found in the work and uh the perfect life uh of Christ.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: So on the other side of that coin, um sin overthrows the wicked.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: If you are found dead in your sin, in your sin, you um you're being you'll be cast.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: You'll be cast into uh into the lake of fire, and you will have to pay for your sins uh one day.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: But praise be to God that we have uh we have an advocate.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: We had one that stood in the void and took took our place um in all of our hope and all of our our uh our peace um that would guard us from um guard us from destruction is found in the man of Jesus Christ.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you so much for joining us today on the Lamp and Light Bible Reading Podcast.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: For more information about Compass Bible Church South Valley, visit compass Bible SV.org.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: Keep reading, keep growing.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: God's word is a lamp to your feet and a light to your path.