Latest / Lamp and Light Bible Reading Plan / May 8, 2026 - Leviticus 20 & Psalm99

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May 8, 2026 - Leviticus 20 & Psalm99 · Lamp and Light Bible Reading Plan

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: 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.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Josiah Smith, joined by Tyler Sanborn.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: Today is Friday, May 8th, 2026.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: Listen intently to God's written word.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: Leviticus 20.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Say to the people of Israel, and any one of the people of Israel, or of the strangers who sojourn in Israel, who gives any of his children to Moloch, shall surely be put to death.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: The people of the land shall stone him with stones.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: I myself will set my face against that man and will cut him off from among his people, because he has given one of his children to Moloch, to make my saints sanctuary unclean, and to profane my holy name.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: And if the people of the land do at all close their eyes to that man when he gives one of his children to Moloch, and do not put him to death, then I will set my face against that man and against his clan, and will cut them off from among their people, him and all who follow him in whoring after Moloch.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: If a person turns to mediums and necromancers, whoring after them, I will set my face against that person, and will cut him off from among his people.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy, for I am the Lord your God.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: Keep my statutes and do them.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: I am the Lord who sanctifies you.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: For any one who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: He has cursed his father or his mother, his blood is upon him.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: If a man lies with his father's wife, he has uncovered his father's nakedness, both of them shall surely be put to death, their blood is upon them.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: If a man lies with his daughter in law, both of them shall surely be put to death.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: They have committed perversion, their blood is upon them.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination, they shall surely be put to death, their blood is upon them.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: If a man takes a woman and her mother also, it is depravity, he and they shall be burned with fire, that there may be no depravity among you.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: If a man lies with an animal, he shall surely be put to death, and you shall kill the animal.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: If a woman approaches any animal and lies with it, you shall kill the woman and the animal, they shall surely be put to death, their blood is upon them.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: If a man takes his sister, a daughter of his father, or a daughter of his mother, and sees her nakedness, and she says his nakedness, it is a disgrace, and they shall be cut off in the sight of the children of their people.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: He has uncovered his sister's nakedness, and he shall bear his iniquity.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: If a man lies with a woman during her minstrel period and uncovers her nakedness, he has made naked her fountain, and she has uncovered the fountain of her blood.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: Both of them shall be cut off from among their people.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: You shall not uncover the nakedness of your mother's sister, or of your father's sister, for that is to make naked one's relative, they shall bear their iniquity.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: If a man lies with his uncle's wife, he has uncovered his uncle's nakedness, they shall bear their sin, they shall die childless.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: If a man takes his brother's wife, it is impurity.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: He has uncovered his brother's nakedness, they shall be childless.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: You shall therefore keep all my statutes and all my rules and do them, that the land where I am bringing you to live may not vomit you out, and you shall not walk in the customs of the nation that I am driving out before you.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: For they did all these things, and therefore I detested them.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: But I have said to you, you shall inherit their land, and I will give it to you to possess, a land flowing with milk and honey.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: I am the Lord your God, who has separated you from the peoples.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: You shall therefore separate the clean beast from the unclean, and the unclean bird from the clean.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: You shall not make yourselves detestable by beast, or by bird, or by anything with which the ground crawls, which I have set apart for you to hold unclean.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: You shall be holy to me, for I, the Lord, am holy, and have separated you from the peoples that you should be mine.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: A man or woman who is a medium or a necromancer shall surely be put to death.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: They shall be stoned with stones, their blood shall be upon them.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Psalm ninety nine.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord reigns.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Let the peoples tremble.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: He sits enthroned upon the cherubim.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Let the earth quake.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord is great in Zion.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: He ex is exalted over all the peoples.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Let them praise your great and awesome name.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Holy is he.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: The king in his might loves justice.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: You have established equity.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: You have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Exalt the Lord our God.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Worship at his footstool.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Holy is he.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: Moses and Aaron were among his priests.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Samuel also was among those who called upon his name.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: They called to the Lord, and he answered them.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: In the pillar of the cloud he spoke to them.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: They kept his testimonies in the statute that he gave them.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: O Lord our God, you answered them.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: You were a forgiving God to them, but an avenger of their wrongdoings.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Exalt the Lord our God and worship at his holy mountain, for the Lord our God is holy.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: Leviticus twenty is kind of hard to read in some ways.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of death.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's some continuation of some of the things that we've talked about with uh even chapter 18 of not lying or uncovering the nakedness of certain family members or of other kinds of people, different categories of people.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: But here again in Leviticus 20, we see some continuing laws that are centered on morality and ethics.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: These again, of course, correspond with the holiness of God, his perfection, his expectations for this nation that he has made a covenant with.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: So adultery, sexual immorality, uh child sacrifice, uh, even it says in verses eight and nine um, keep my statutes and do them.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: I am the Lord who sanctifies you.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: For anyone who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: He has cursed his father or his mother, his blood is upon him.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: So even cursing uh mother and father also leads to death.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: Now, cursing here isn't just you know them cussing them out or something like that, using foul language.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's not an argument that they have, it's not a disagreement.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: This is I kind of think of it as essentially the kids almost standing up in a very public, obvious way, and more or less denouncing their mother and father.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: So it's the exact opposite of honor your father and mother.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a sort of a declaration of I want nothing to do with you.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's like the opposite of the blessing that comes along with that um falling and upholding that command.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna go well for you.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna go wickedly, terribly deathful for you.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and again, this is this is something that is dramatic and it's not an argument, it's not a little kid saying, I hate you and running away in anger.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's this is a full-fledged, hard-hearted, just active rebellion against mom and dad that has led to, again, a kind of public um emancipation, if you will, uh a self-deck self-declared emancipation from their parents.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: And uh that's not honoring to the Lord.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so it was worthy of death.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so, all of these, one of the things that I want you to see kind of as the through line for Leviticus 20, uh, is the family units, of course, starting with children.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, that's within the context of a family, being fruitful, multiplying, having children.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: Those are uh a blessing from the Lord, a heritage from the Lord.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and God takes the family very seriously.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: So um we have children and not sacrificing them, obviously, uh, to false gods, uh, taking their life is something that's worthy of death.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: But even children towards their parents, uh dishonoring them in this sort of cursing kind of way is worthy of death.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: And then even uh within sort of the adult relationships sexually, mother and father, um, those are also taken very seriously.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's how it starts in verse 10.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, uh so then we kind of move from children, we we move from parents sacrificing kids to kids denouncing parents, back to parents kind of um, or husband and wife rather, committing adultery on one another.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so all of these are centered on the family.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: And what's interesting is the shift after verse 16.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: So between verses one through 16, it's kind of like death, death, death, death, death.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: You do this, you die.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: You engage in this sin, you die.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: You reject your parents, you die.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: You commit adultery, you die.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: But then in verse 17, we see a shift.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: If a man takes his sister, a daughter of his father or a daughter of his mother and sees her nakedness, and the implication there that's sort of a euphemism again for a sexual relationship of some kind, and she sees his nakedness, it is a disgrace.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: And they shall be now, notice it doesn't say they shall die, but it used similar language, they shall be cut off in the sight of the children of their people.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: He has uncovered his sister's nakedness and he shall bear his iniquity.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: So moving forward, or we're kind of back to the cutoff language earlier in Leviticus that we talked about, where there is different views as to whether or not that meant death.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: I think the view in my mind that makes the most sense is no, this is kind of an exile, uh, where specifically you no longer are uh you don't have any children, you don't have any lineage, all of the rights with your land, all those things kind of getting bound up.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: You get cut off uh from the covenant blessings of the Lord, you get cut off from your future uh lineage through your children, you get cut off from all of those things, and that seems to be the shift here.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: So you no longer are losing your life.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was just kind of wrestling with why why in verses one through 16, yeah, is everyone sort of dying for these offenses in verses 17 and onward, um, they are not.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, uh, the more I looked into this, kind of the consensus seems to be verses one through 16 almost speak more directly to the immediate family unit.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: So children to their parents, um, husband to their wife, wife to their husband, uh, and even people kind of living within a specific family unit, which back then there would be more than what we have typically today.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: But all of the relationships talked about and all of the offenses talked about in verses one through 16 are the immediate family.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: So for you and I, Tyler, it would be our wives and our children, right?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: The people living directly in our homes.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so because God places such a premium on the family, because God even in the Old Testament is working out his covenant promises through family units, and of course, uh through the family of Adam and Eve, ultimately the Messiah, the seed of the woman, would come, he holds the family in high regard.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so, because of this immediate context within the immediate family, uh, there seems to be a more severe punishment.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: And it also seems to be the case that within an immediate family, there's a greater awareness uh for actual offenses committed.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: So uh with within the Old Testament law, you had to have two or three witnesses uh to establish a conviction.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um so a lot of these uh sort of sentences of death were actually very rarely carried out because of that command, because of that um that stipulation of on two or three witnesses.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um but within the immediate family, you would practically speaking have more people that would have more eyes and more awareness of that offense, uh, and so therefore could potentially lead to a more severe or uh more readily being carried out, the the punishment.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: And then the the all of the relationships with the remainder starting in verse 17 are people outside.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: So it says it starts in verse 17.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: If a man takes his sister, now a sister gets married to another man and then moves into their house, right?
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a separation, they're not no longer an immediate uh family.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's sort of the implication, and even in verse 19, you shall not you shall not uncover the nakedness of your mother's sister, right, which is your aunt, or of your father's sister, right?
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: So there's these relationships that are not immediately within the home, or if a man lies with his uncle's wife, right?
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: So we have all of these relationships that are in different household units that are farther away from your immediate household.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so it seems to be whether it's just because of a lack of witnesses two to three, or because of the premium on you taking care of your own family, um, there seems to be a distancing of punishment, at least from death, and a lessening uh thereto.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: But if you imagine, you know, these these other relationships, right?
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: So your mother's sister or your father's sister or your uncle's wife and their more immediate families, verses one through sixteen apply.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: So everyone's kind of getting the same sort of expectations and laws, uh, but they differ for the farther away the family member, uh, the less severe the punishment.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: And there's something strange about that, and there's something I don't quite understand about it.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: But again, it could be the two to three witnesses, uh, it could be just the premium of the immediate family and the responsibility of the mother and father specifically uh to lead the family in what it looked like to be holy and set apart for the Lord, and a failure to do that in the immediate sense potentially caused a greater punishment.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I don't know, it isn't specified specifically in the text, but just note that one through sixteen, all of the offenses lead to death, 17 and onward.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh they are leading to being cut off, exiled, uh, or childlessness is another one where it says that in verse 20.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: They shall die childless, or verse 21, they shall be childless.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: And all of this again goes back to why are we doing this?
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: What are these commands?
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's because God says, I am the Lord your God who has separated you from the peoples.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: You shall be holy.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: Verse 26 to me, for I, the Lord, am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so God has separated a people for himself.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: They are to live in a separate way uh that is distinct from the surrounding pagan nations.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: They are not to engage in child sacrifice to this false god Mulloch.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: They are not to engage in the sexual immorality that even uh in the previous chapter it talks about these other nations, Egypt and Canaan, are just willfully giving themselves over to.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: God detests that.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's uh verse 23.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: You shall not walk in the customs of the nation that I am driving out before you, for they did all these things, and therefore I detested them.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so God is creating, fashioning, forming a people for himself.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: They are to be holy, sanctified, set apart.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and these all kind of focus largely on familial relationships of some kind, uh, parents towards their kids, kids towards their parents, husbands towards their wives, wives towards their husbands, even sort of greater, more extended family, uncles and sister-in-laws, and all of those things moving forward from the immediate family and kind of radiating outward.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: So that's Leviticus 20 in a nutshell.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, as we use that foundation at the end of Leviticus 20 and look over to our text in Psalm 99, we see the Lord's holiness declared three times uh at the beginning and the middle and at the end of this psalm.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, and also we see this we see this nod here to the to Hebrews once again.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Hebrews, I think PJ, you said is the most uh is the book that has the most old testament quotations, is that correct?
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: Out of any New Testament book.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: And we see he, the Lord, reigning over the peoples, let them tremble, um, let them tremble in in reverence to him.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: And where is he seated?
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: He's enthroned above uh the cherubim.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: And this is uh a zoom into the holy of holies, uh reference here to the creator of all the peoples, the creator of of the angels, Hebrews 1:6.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: He is enthroned, he is above all and deserves and is due reverence and worship.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: He is high and lifted up.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he is supreme, and he is worthy of the worship of the peoples of the earth.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: Verse three, let them praise your great and awesome name.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe PJ, you can give us some insight into the the repetition of three.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: He is holy, holy is he in verse three, holy is he in verse five, and for the Lord our God is holy in verse nine.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the the the number three, uh you know, we don't want to over-spiritualize it, but the number three is all over the scriptures.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: The Trinity is three and one.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um God rose Jesus from the dead three days later.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, God is referred to as holy, holy, holy three times.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so there's there's the number three is a significant number, but I think this is kind of a call to the Isaiah six vision of the throne room where he says, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: So we have those two visions both in Isaiah 6 and in Revelation, where God is said to be holy, holy, holy.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: So it's kind of a number that also means um complete, perfect, filled up.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's to stress the significance of something.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so in Psalm 99, it's mirroring that reality that God is holy, holy, holy.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: And just to plug, uh, if you're at Compass Bible Church, South Valley, we have a women's event this Saturday um and a men's event next Saturday, and we're going to be talking more in depth about what it means to be holy.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, in order to understand what it means for us to be holy, we have to understand what it means for the Lord to be holy.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: So that threefold repetition is throughout the scriptures.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: God is that's the really the only the only attribute of God that is repeated in that way.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: Holy, holy, holy.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh if you want to learn more about that in uh a women's event or a men's event, we invite you to go to our website, comesbible sv.org, and register for the upcoming events this Saturday and next Saturday.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you so much, PJ, for that plug and for that insight into three and um God's otherness, his holiness, and the reverence that is is due his name.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm looking here to the middle of the psalm as we continue on, a reference to priests, a reference to God's faithful servants and how they were how we're led by God and how faithful God was to respond to them as they called out independence on his name.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: And we're thinking about the book of Leviticus, Moses and Aaron and the Levites, and the the system of how God's people were to sacrifice and how God is faithful uh to forgive.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um his justice and his righteousness is perfect.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: And as you consider the the surrounding nations and the surrounding gods who are false, fake, a figment of the imagination of the peoples as they're creating things um from the creation to worship that the creator made, they are chasing after a God that would be um imagined by the thoughts of of men.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: And the thoughts of men are so much lower than God's thoughts, his thoughts are are so high above.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: How are how are we to know him outside of his revealed word to us?
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: But the the faithful men that God has has used to uh to establish uh his word.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking about Moses, and we're we're in the the Pentateuch, we're in the first five books of the Old Testament.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: This law that God has given to us is good, it is pure, it is just and God is is then speaking to his people and utilizing his people since the creation of man, and he is a faithful God that is um faithful to generations, a God that is forgiving, and a God that we see is is correcting.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: He is a God that is disciplining his people in verse eight, an avenger of their their wrongdoings.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: God is not winking at sin, he is not one to tolerate sin, and he has made a way through the the Levitical system to to uh remedy sin and to cover sin, uh to allow his people uh to continue.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: to be his people, to worship his people, to worship their God rather.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and we see at the the climax of uh of this psalm the end here verse 9 exalt the Lord our God and worship at his holy mountain the temple mount in Jerusalem uh the temple at this point in time was not uh in Leviticus is not yet built but um in our psalm um PJ was the was the the temple built as as we look at the 99th psalm at this point in our text is do we have any any clues or indication that uh the temple whether whether it's Solomon um or the rebuilding of the temple later do we have any indication that this is a reflection on on what was or uh what was was to come with God's people as far as worship goes in Jerusalem?
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah I'm not I'm not sure when this was written uh it comes after because not not all of the Psalms are in chronological order it comes after the Lament Psalms that talk about the Babylonian captivity.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm not sure exactly when this was written and if the temple was destroyed at this point or that was future or if they were looking forward to the rebuilt temple or whatnot.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: But no Psalm 99 focuses on the holiness of God.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: And again if you want to learn more about that go to our women's event this Saturday or our men's event next Saturday.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: We hope to see you there.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well thank you so much for joining us today on the Lamp and Light Bible reading podcast.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: For more information about Compass Bible Church South Valley visit compassbiblesv.org keep reading keep growing God's word is the lamp to your feet and a light to your path