Latest / Lamp and Light Bible Reading Plan / June 20, 2026 - Numbers 30 & Psalm 119:137-144

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June 20, 2026 - Numbers 30 & Psalm 119:137-144 · 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 Saturday, June 20th, 2026.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: Listen intently to God's written word.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: Numbers 30.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: Moses spoke to the heads of the tribes of the people of Israel, saying, This is what the Lord has commanded.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: If a man vows a vow to the Lord, or swears an oath to bind himself by a pledge, he shall not break his word, he shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: If a woman vows a vow to the Lord, and binds herself by a pledge, while within her father's house in her youth, and her father hears of her vow and of her pledge by which she has bound herself and says nothing to her, then all her vows shall stand, and every pledge by which she has bound herself shall stand.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: But if her father opposes her on the day that her hears of it, no vow of hers, no pledge by which she has bound herself shall stand, and the Lord will forgive her, because her father opposed her.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: If she marries a husband while under her vows, or any thoughtless utterance of her lips by which she has bound herself, and her husband hears of it and says nothing to her on the day that he hears, then her vows shall stand, and her pledges by which she has bound herself shall stand.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: But if, on the day that her husband comes to hear of it, he opposes her, then he makes void her vow that was on her, and the thoughtless utterance of her lips by which she bound herself, and the Lord will forgive her.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: But any vow of a widow or of a divorced woman, anything by which she has bound herself shall stand against her.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: And if she vowed in her husband's house, or bound herself by a pledge with an oath, and her husband heard of it, and said nothing to her, and did not oppose her, then all her vows shall stand, and every pledge by which she bound herself shall stand.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: But if her husband makes them null and void on the day that he hears them, then whatever proceeds out of her lips concerning her vows, or concerning her pledge of herself shall not stand.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: Her husband has made them void, and the Lord will forgive her.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: Any vow and any binding oath to afflict herself, her husband may establish, or her husband may make void.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: But if her husband says nothing to her from day to day, then he establishes all her vows, or all her pledges that are upon her.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: He has established them, because he has said nothing to her on the day that he heard of them.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: But if he makes them null and void after he has heard of them, then he shall bear her iniquity.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: These are the statues that the Lord commanded Moses about a man and his wife, and about a father and his daughter, while she is in her youth within her father's house.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Psalm 119, verses 137 through 144.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Righteous are you, O Lord, and right are your rules.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: You have appointed your testimonies in righteousness, and in all faithfulness.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: My zeal consumes me, because my foes forget your words.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Your promise is well tried, and your servant loves it.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: I am small and despised, yet I do not forget your precepts.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Your righteousness is righteous forever, and your law is true.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Trouble and anguish have found me out, but your commandments are my delight.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Your testimonies are righteous forever.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Give me understanding that I may live.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: Numbers thirty details the vows of men and women and the expectations and the rules, and you could say even regulations that go along with those vows.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things that's so clear, Tyler, as we read numbers thirty, is how serious making a vow to the Lord is.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: Now, one of the things that we need to note is that these are not just general commitments, these are not even promises from one Israelite to the next.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: These are vows, which is a different category, that are made directly to the Lord.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: Now, there's nothing specified in Numbers 30 as to what exactly these vows entail.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: We've already studied various vows so far.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: We have the sort of Levitical vows that were uh of monetary value there at the end of Leviticus.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: Those were also bound up with land.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: We've had the Nazarite vow, which we read about earlier in the book of Numbers, that uh you couldn't eat certain things that uh Tyler really loves, and he would be sad to not eat as a Nazirite.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: No more grapes, grapes, raisins, uh, or anything from the vine.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but this doesn't specify the kind of vow, but it does make it clear that these vows are to the Lord.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: So it was someone making some sort of formal commitment to serve the Lord in a particular way, which by the way, that's kind of what the Nazarite vow was and is.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was voluntary.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: God did not require certain people to take the Nazarite vow, but they could.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: It was sort of a means by which they could express and walk out perhaps a deeper devotion to the Lord.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then there were expectations of what that would look like.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: So we kind of paralleled that to elder qualifications in the New Testament to some extent, but there's these qualifications of the office of elder that they are to abide by and to uh they are to measure up to and be measured against.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so there's that sense within the Nazarite vow as well, that if you're gonna do that, if you're gonna walk in that commitment, then it requires certain things and you got to live those things out.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: Now, numbers 30 again doesn't detail the specifics of what these vows are, but it's very clear that they're made to the Lord and there's a seriousness.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think one of the takeaways that we can have, because we're not making vows to the Lord in the same way here, underneath the same sort of framework of the mosaic or Sinai, Sinai covenant.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't say that right.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: But the Sinai Covenant, that there's a fancier way to say that uh that I that is escaping me in the moment.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: But we're not under that covenant any longer.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: But nevertheless, I think the the principle that we can draw from this is be true to your word, that when you make a commitment, that you when you make a promise, now of course those are different than the vows here in numbers 30, but some parallel, of course.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we want to make sure that we are keeping our commitments.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: And James has something to say about this, Tyler.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: You just finished the book of James.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: What does James tell us about uh making commitments and following through on them?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the brother of Jesus.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh James is saying, let your yes be your yes and your no be your no.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Let uh don't don't mix words, don't don't uh say one thing and do another, be true to your word.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: If you're gonna say you're gonna go and do something, go and do it, and don't go back and say, actually, I I I can't or I won't, or just be truthful, say what you mean, mean what you say, and uh in the words of Jesus, uh, let your yes be your yes and your no your no.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's that this is a biblical principle from both the Old Testament and the New Testament.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think a Proverbs chapter six that talks about the things that the Lord hates and a lying tongue is one of them.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so we want to be people that if we make a commitment, if we make a promise, if we tell someone that we're gonna do something, that we ought to be known, especially as Christians, as those who are following God, God fears that we are going to follow through.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna let our yes be yes and our no be no.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: Now, some of the structuring here of some of these vows, you know, women in vows, the young, the young women in vows that are living in the house, or uh a wife of a husband.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, some of this is actually for the protection of these women.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: You got to remember how the society was ordered, specifically in terms of inheritances that were passed down through the paternal line.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: So you can think of the vow and perhaps even the breaking of the vow being connected to uh perhaps even loss of some type of uh monetary thing.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm thinking about a Leviticus, the end of the Leviticus, uh, or some kind of inheritance or even being cut off.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so there's that sense of even protection where the father, through whom you know, the inheritance typically would would pass and be given to, uh, pass down from and be given uh in and through.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he would ultimately have the sort of final appeal, if you were, uh the final vote in a specific vow, uh, because there was oftentimes financial things associated with it.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's a protection here for the women in this society, uh, there's just uh kind of checks and balances, and ultimately that we even see kind of men carrying the the brunt, if you want to put it that way, of the vow that's being made, that ultimately, if it was go if it was going to be upheld, they were going to be held responsible if they're involved in this as the father or as a husband.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh I think there's just male headship in that, of course, which is God's biblical design, but also I think it's a protection for women that if they made a vow that perhaps would put them in a dire situation, maybe financially, if they didn't keep it, um, there would be a means by which before that happened, uh, a husband or father could step in and say, This is not something that we're gonna do for whatever reason.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: And that was just one of the ways that God would provide for women during this time.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: PJ, as we looked before we start started recording, we noticed some repetitive words here in our psalm passage today, verses 137 to 144.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: And within eight verses, you mentioned there are four instances of righteousness or righteous in this passage.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the psalmist is trying to get our attention here with this word, and it's speaking of the Lord and his rules, and uh, there's some weight behind behind this repetition.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think it should really draw our attention to stopping and pausing and reflecting on um the Lord and his righteousness, the way he is that's just his nature, his character.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: He is so other than so set apart, so holy, all of his ways are good and pure and and moral.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: And his way is the best way, any other way that we would seek to go, any other law that would be outside of God's law would be uh would be would be sin.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: So we would look to this psalm here this uh this morning and and say to ourselves, uh, we need to echo the the words of the psalmists here, and um, especially in the concluding verse, I really love how it finishes in this section.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Your testimonies are righteous forever.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Give me understanding that I may live.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we don't live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God in his scriptures, and it's our hope and our foundation of our faith and uh where we place our hope for life everlasting.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, even this little short section here begins in verse 137 with righteous, and it ends in verse 144 with righteous.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: So there in 137, righteous are you, O Lord.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: So there is five occasions, six, if you want to use the word right, because in verse 137, righteous are you, O Lord, and right are your rules.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: So you could technically say one and two.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: Right is sort of a a cognate of righteous.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh 138, you have appointed your testimonies in righteousness and in all faithfulness.
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  SPEAKER_01: 142, your righteousness is righteous forever.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: Think about that.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: Your righteousness is righteous forever.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh doesn't fade or diminish.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and even verse 144, your testimonies are righteous.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: We have righteous in 144, righteous and righteousness twice in 142, righteousness in 138, and then righteous in 137, uh, and right again in 137 as well.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: So this is clearly the theme of this section: that God is right.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: What he does is righteous.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it's good, it's proper, it's fitting as it should be.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that's who God is.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if we parallel that to what we were just talking about in Numbers 30, God makes a cut, he makes a commitment, he makes a promise, oftentimes is what the word is in scripture, and he fulfills it.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: He does what he says he will do.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: And even in the book of Hebrews, it says that God makes a vow, and he makes a vow to his people, and ultimately, because he makes a vow, he he is the one that is gonna uphold it in his righteousness, he's gonna do what is right.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's even why there is such seriousness and weight to the Israelites making a vow, because it was sort of paralleling the vow that God had made to them, that he would be their God, that he would bless them, that he would protect them.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so to make a vow to God, the one who is the vow keeper, if you want to put it that way, the one who does righteousness and is righteous, his righteousness is righteous, according to Psalm 119.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, that's why if you break a vow, it's it's a solemn, uh, sort of scary thing, uh, because again, it's directly connected to God's vow and his covenant keeping.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: So God is righteous, he does what is righteous, his righteousness is righteous, according to Psalm 119, 142, and even verse 144.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: Your testimonies are righteous forever.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: Give me understanding that I may live.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: Again, we need to have that perspective when it comes to God's word.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: Give me understanding that I may live.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: There is life in the scriptures, there is life that we need.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think of the words of Jesus in the Gospel of John that we are to abide in him, and by abiding in him, we can bear much fruit.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: We are needing to be attached to the vine in order to have life and vibrancy and the nutrients that we need.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: And as a part of abiding in Christ and his words abiding in us, of course, that means that we need to be consistent and steadfast in the word.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I love just that uh the idea there in verse 144 your testimonies are righteous forever, they're always going to be that.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: Give me understanding of your righteousness according to your word, that I may live.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a kind of a perspective that we need to have as we open God's word.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Something interesting here, PJ.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's a good uh a warning for us.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 139.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: My zeal consumes me because my foes forget your words.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: I can't help but think that this is someone that the psalmist is referring to that is familiar with God's word, that's that has been maybe even instructed uh in the ways of the Lord.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: But the words that were once in the mind are now forgotten, they're not there anymore.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it's something for us to really take hold of.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: We have a privilege to have God's word before us in our pocket, um, in in written form, on a tablet, wherever it may be, um, hopefully memorized and stored up in our minds, because we need to be remembering God's word and remember his promises, remembering his statutes, because it is too easy to drift away.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: We see instances of that today, sadly, people walking away from the faith, people rejecting and purposefully forgetting the words of God in a way that would enable them to live the life that they would prefer to live outside of God's law, outside of his judgments, and outside of his rule over their lives.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's important for us to put God's word in front of our hearts, in front of our minds, and really meditate on them because it's too easy to forget that the the zeal of the psalmist is consuming him because his foes forget the words of the Lord.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I just think of Deuteronomy chapter six, where we are to have these uh instructions, commandments, precepts kind of bound to us.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: And we are to teach them diligently to our children, to teach the coming generations of who God is according to his word.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: So let that just be an encouragement to you.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: Have this perspective of Psalm 119, 144.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: Give me understanding into the righteousness of God that we may live, that we may have life and have a sense of vibrancy, abiding in the vine of Christ, and in doing so bearing much fruit.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: But thank you so much for joining us today on the Lamp and Light Bible Reading Podcast.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: For more information about Compass Bible Church South Valley, visit compass Bible SV.org.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: Keep reading, keep growing.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: God's word is a lamp to your feet and a light to your path.