Latest / Lamp and Light Bible Reading Plan / June 22, 2026 - Numbers 31 & Psalm 119:145-152

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June 22, 2026 - Numbers 31 & Psalm 119:145-152 · 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, lead pastor of Compass South Valley.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Today is Monday, June 22nd, 2026.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a quick summary of Numbers 31.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Numbers 31 details the divine command, really, from God, to mobilize a military conquest against Midian.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so God instructs Moses to organize Israel's vengeance against Midian with a campaign serving as Moses' final act before his death.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the Israelites assemble twelve thousand warriors, one thousand from each tribe, and they dispatch them under Phineas, the priest, who carries the sanctuary's sacred vessels and battle trumpets.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so we see the battle detailed there in Numbers 31, and we see the aftermath and Moses' confrontation over the captive women and what they are to do with them, specifically because of their role in leading the nation of Israel into adultery against the Lord and the covenant that they made with God because of some of the things that they were involved with, connecting their survival even to Balaam's role in Israel's earlier spiritual compromise that's detailed earlier in Numbers.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a quick summary there of Numbers 31.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Listen intently to God's written word.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Psalm 119, 145 through 152.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: With my whole heart I cry, answer me, O Lord.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: I will keep your statutes.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: I call to you, save me, that I may observe your testimonies.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: I rise before dawn and cry for help.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: I hope in your words.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: My eyes are awake before the watches of the night, that I may meditate on your promise.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Hear my voice according to your steadfast love.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: O Lord, according to your justice, give me life.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: They draw near who persecute me with evil purpose.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: They are far from your law, but you are near, O Lord, and all your commandments are true.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Long have I known from your testimonies that you have founded them forever.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this week is a special week in the life of Compass Bible Church South Valley because this week, especially today, marks our beginning of our very first camp compass, our inaugural camp compass here at Compass Bible Church South Valley.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I just want to ask you and invite you to pray.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Pray for this week.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: There has been a lot of preparation.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's been a lot of people involved, expending of themselves.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: I was even at the school on Sunday for a good part of the day during the setup, and there was just so many dedicated servants that were there for long hours.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: They're really tired to create just a great environment for these young kids to teach them God's word.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, our theme is really about the glory of God.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's the name of the camp compass this year: God's glory to infinity and beyond.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're going to be studying creation.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Even today, we are teaching on Genesis chapter one.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: Tomorrow we'll be teaching on Psalm 19.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: We're just looking at the glory of God as seen and displayed through creation.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so I would just ask that you would pray for us.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: I pray for Tyler and I as we open up the week of teaching on Monday and Tuesday.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then pray for Pastor John, who's heading up the short-term missions trip from that high school group of students that some of you are introduced to this past Sunday from California.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, he and along with other uh two others from that team are going to be finishing out the week.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: So Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, they will be teaching.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: And Monday and Tuesday, today and tomorrow, Tyler and I will be teaching and are teaching.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so I would just ask that you would pray.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Pray for just clarity in the delivery of God's word.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Pray for even just these young hearts.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we can get it in our minds that it's uh impossible for a child to respond with repentance and faith to the gospel.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: But let's pray.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray for the Lord to do that.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray for the Lord to open blind eyes, to save young hearts.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: And let's just pray that these seeds, these gospel seeds, would be planted in these young hearts and that they would be watered for years to come and that they would bear much fruit.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: Think of the parable of the soils, that the this these seeds would bear 30, 60, 100fold fruit in the lives of these kids.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: And we also pray that the families uh would be uh impacted, that they would be encouraged as they come in to drop off or come in to pick up, that we'd be intentional with conversations and follow-up, especially with families that we know are not from our church, or perhaps are not from any church, that we'd be intentional to encourage them, to even share the gospel with them.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: So please pray with us.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: We are dependent on prayer.
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  SPEAKER_00: Apart from Christ, we can do nothing.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: We need to be fully reliant on prayer.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so we need to go to the go to the Father in the name of the Son and ask, so that the Father may give and be glorified.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's what we want, and that's what I ask you to pray for.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in our passages today, a couple of things just to note.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: Again, there in Numbers 31, we we see the seriousness of ultimately idolatry, the seriousness of Israel uh when they were led into false worship of false gods, uh, when they were um ultimately rebelling against the Lord and Midian and the prophets of Baal.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: They all it's kind of a convoluted uh story, but ultimately this is God's vengeance of this nation that led his people into rebellion against them.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, uh Israel uh has culpability in this, and it's a part of their uh ultimate barring from the promised land.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: But this is this is a this is a tough chapter to read.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we do see God's justice and vengeance and judgment being poured out on a particular ungodly nation, and that's something that we need to wrestle with, and not something that we need to we need to sidestep or try to uh pretend like it's not there.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: It it's it's challenging text, but it's one that showcases again the holiness of God and the seriousness of the Ten Commandments, that we are not to have any other God before the one true God, Yahweh.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, that was especially true for Israel.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: The Ten Commandments kind of served as their ratifying documents that constituted their nation.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: And ultimately, this vengeance uh again is a response to Israel being lured into uh spiritual idolatry as a result of uh some of the things that were happening in the earlier chapters that we have read through.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Psalm 119, 145 through 152, is just such an encouraging text.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Even verse 145 to start to start off, it says, With my whole heart I cry.
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  SPEAKER_00: Answer me, O Lord, I will keep your statute.
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  SPEAKER_00: So think about that phrase, with my whole heart.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, how many of us can say that we do much of anything with our whole hearts?
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, our hearts are so fickle.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'm just speaking from my own vantage point, or where I feel like my heart sometimes is a mixture of things that are both godly and sincere and ungodly and insincere and sinful.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so we see here, with my whole heart I cry.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just a challenging and encouraging verse for me, because I mean, even thinking about the great commandment that Jesus gives in the gospels, that we are to love the Lord our God with all of our hearts.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that is something that, of course, we fall short in.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: We're never going to love God perfectly, we're never gonna love God with everything absolutely that we are, because again, there's indwelling sin that we wrestle when we wrestle with.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: We are still uh living in a fallen world, we still have corruptible bodies, as Paul talks about in the New Testament.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: But nevertheless, this is such an encouraging thing, and something that I think we need to think more about is is our worship of God sincere?
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Is it with our whole heart?
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Is it this sense of you can even think of some of the other words that we've seen already in Psalm 119, yearning or panting, this idea of just desiring the Lord, desiring his word.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: That even connects to what we talked about on Sunday, that God's word is a surgical scalpel that God uses to diagnose, but ultimately to have a prescription to help us to heal us, as it were, uh, spiritually speaking, and to uh conform us greater into the image of Christ.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so those words just really struck me.
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  SPEAKER_00: Uh, with my whole heart, I cry.
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  SPEAKER_00: Answer me, oh Lord.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: And this is something that I think we should be praying, Lord, help me to love you with my whole heart.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Even just there's a confession in there for me, uh God, I don't often love you with my whole heart.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's how often I I can feel, just in the sincerity and the honestness of uh where I kind of have some sense of awareness of what's going on in my heart.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: I need growth in this, I need help in this.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is a prayer that I know I need to pray, God, would you help me to love you, to cry out to you with my whole heart, sincerely and truly.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now, part of the reason why I'm thinking about this is because a book that I finished reading uh probably about a month ago now by John Bunyan.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think the book is just called Prayer, uh, but he defines prayer towards the beginning of the book.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that he says is that prayer is sincere.
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  SPEAKER_00: And he quotes from various passages that are similar here to Psalm 119.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Prayer is a sincere crying out, a plea to the Lord.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: And we we see that reality here in Psalm 119, 145.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: With my whole heart I cry.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the that's the kind of crying out that the Lord desires.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's the kind of worshipful prayer, prayer that God is looking for, if we could say it that way.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's something that that we should grow in, and that's something that I know that I need to grow in.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: And even here, you know, I call to you, save me.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: I rise before dawn and cry for help.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: There's just a consistent theme here of meditating on God's word and responding in prayer, ingesting God's word, responding in prayer, meditating on it, thinking about it, dwelling on it, and responding by crying out.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: With my whole heart, I cry.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: I call to you, I cry for help.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's a repeated refrain here in this next set of verses from Psalm 119, 145 through 152.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: So please, as I mentioned earlier, uh pray with us, pray with us today and all throughout the week for Camp Compass, pray for stamina for the volunteers.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: I just pray for all the details to come together seamlessly and pray for God to be glorified and for Jesus to be magnified through our service and through our ministry.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you so much for joining us today on the Lamp and Light Bob Reading Podcast.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: For more information about Compass Bible Church South Valley, visit compassbiblesv.org.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: Keep reading, keep growing.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: God's word is a lamp to your feet and a light to your path.