Lamp and Light Bible Reading Plan

January 17, 2026 - Genesis 15 & Psalm 15

• Josiah Smith - Compass Bible Church South Valley

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God meets Abram’s doubt with a promise and binds that promise with His own character. We trace the thread from Genesis 15 to Psalm 15 to show how faith is counted as righteousness and how Christ’s merit makes us stand.

• Land, seed and blessing in the Abrahamic covenant
• God as shield and reward amid uncertainty
• Promise repeated instead of detailed timelines
• From entitlement to trust through God’s word
• Faith credited as righteousness as a core doctrine
• God choosing and transforming a pagan to keep promise
• Psalm 15’s standard and Christ’s imputed righteousness
• Hope, inheritance and perseverance in waiting

For more information about Compass Bible Church South Valley, visit compassbiblesv.org. Keep reading. Keep growing. God’s Word is a lamp to your feet, and a light to your path.

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Lamp and Light Bible Reading 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. I'm Josiah Smith, joined by Tyler Sanborn. Today is Saturday, January 17th, 2026. Listen intently to God's written word. Genesis 15. After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. Fear not, Abram, I am your shield. Your reward shall be very great. But Abram said, O Lord God, what will you give me? For I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus. And Abram said, Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, This man shall not be your heir, your very own son shall be your heir. And he brought him outside and said, Look toward heaven and number the stars. If you are able to number them, then he said to him, So shall your offspring be. And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness. And he said to him, I am the Lord who brought you out from the Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess. But he said, O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it? He said to him, Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtle dove, and a young pigeon. And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in half. And when the birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away. As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram, and behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. Then the Lord said to Abram, Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs, and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace, you shall be buried in a good old age, and they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking firepot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kinesites, the Cadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Gergeshites, and the Jebusites.

SPEAKER_01:

O Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent, who shall dwell on your holy hill? He who walks blamelessly and does what is right, and speaks truth in his heart, who does not slander with his tongue, and does no evil to his neighbor, nor takes up a reproach against his friend, in whose eyes a vile person is despised, but who honors those who fear the Lord, who swears to his own hurt and does not change, who does not put out his money at interest, and does not take a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things shall never be moved.

SPEAKER_00:

Genesis 15 is another very important chapter in the progression of the Abrahamic covenant. Now we remember that it kicked off in Genesis 12, and hopefully those three things that we told you to hang on to to remember uh Genesis 15, Genesis 12, the Abrahamic covenant were land, seed, and blessing. God promised land, and he reiterated that in chapter 14 and 13. Really, he he's reiterated it several times. He has promised blessing, he's promised offspring, and we see that exact thing here in Genesis 15. But what really struck me today was what the Lord says to Abram pretty early on in the chapter. It says in verse 1, After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, and God said, Fear not, Abram, I am your shield, your reward shall be very great. And so we see God providing Abram protection and promise. Now, that word promise, just to put it back into the grand narrative of scripture, we have creation, fall, promise, redemption, restoration. And we're gonna see God's promise unfold all throughout the scriptures, ultimately the promise of the Messiah, the offspring that would crush the head of the serpent. But here we see a very specific promise. God promises protection. He says, I am your shield, but he also has a promise of reward. Your reward shall be very great. And again, I just want to encourage us to really think about those two things, the protection and the promise. Because God does not only provide these things for Abram, the scriptures, and particularly in the Psalms that we've been reading, they tell us that God is these things, He provides these things for you if you are His child. And so I want you to read these things that God is your shield, that your reward shall be very great. Now, there's some immediate context there for the Abrahamic covenant that doesn't necessarily apply to you in the exact same way, but just the blessing of the Lord, the protection of the Lord, even just the reward that we are promised in the future, our inheritance that is kept for us. These two things that God promises Abram. And so we we want to make sure that we're holding on to these truths, that we see God as our shield, our defender, our protector, and we see God as the one through whom and for whom really He gives. What does James tell us, Tyler? It says that every good and perfect gift comes from above. Comes from above, the father of lights. Right. And so we we see an example of that here in uh Genesis 15.

SPEAKER_01:

You know, Pastor Josiah, as I'm reading this chapter in Genesis, I I see a lot of my own heart, a lot of my own attitude uh towards God uh in my in my flesh. I'm I can be tempted to to ask God, where's mine? Where where's where's the thing that that you promised to me? I want it now. I I I uh I need it now, and I don't see a way that you could possibly follow through with what you told me you're gonna do. Yeah. How how's this all gonna work out? I need answers now, God. And I I can have an attitude and a heart heart posture of a clenched fist and wanting wanting what I what with an entitled heart, like, where's mine, God? You told me it was mine, where is it?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. No, and and I think what we've seen with the recurring covenant that God is just continuing to remind Abram of that began in Genesis 12, is when when Abram is seeking specifics, God doesn't give them to him. What does he say? He just reiterates the promise. He says, I will make you a great nation. Your offspring will be as many of this as the stars in the sky, I will bless you. He doesn't say, and this is how it's gonna happen, this is when it's gonna happen. Here's the the 10-step order from A to Z that's gonna help you figure out, okay, here I am in the process, and I know I've got six more steps to go. He just continues to reiterate what he's already said to him. He just keeps saying, I will do it. I will do it.

SPEAKER_01:

Remember, remember who I am? Remember, remember who I told you I was? Yeah, I am who I am, Abram. I I came to you and revealed myself to you and made you aware of who I am, the eternal one, the the all-sufficient one, the one who lacks nothing, who needs nothing, who depends on no one. I am Abram, and you can trust me. And how kind is it that in the face of Abram with his doubts, with his faithlessness, God gives him details. God doubles down, like, remember, I said it, I say it again. This this offspring is gonna be your very own son shall be your heir. Not not not uh Eliezer of Damascus, no. It's gonna be your son, and more detail in in verse 13 what what Abram's offspring will encounter, what what they have to look forward to, um and and and who they will serve. Um and this a great a great excitement fills my heart when I when I could look back and see the whole the whole width, the whole breadth of scripture that God has revealed to us, and we we have we have the episode two, three, four, five, the whole volume and Abram's in episode one, and we can see we can see where the story's going, but we can look and take a snapshot of where Abram's at and and what's to come. That's we see the faithfulness of God in that.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, Abraham he he switches, right? He he begins with doubt. Oh Lord God, what will you give me for I continue childless? The heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus. How's this gonna work? He he starts in this place where I think this is what you were getting at, Tyler. We we all we can get there. We can go, God, how's it gonna work out? How are the specifics gonna come together? I know what your word has said, but but I just don't see it. Uh, how's this gonna how's this gonna work? And what does God do for Abram? Again, he just he says, Behold, the word of the Lord came to him, this man shall not be your heir, your very own son shall be your father, which he's our shall be your heir, which is you know, he's already told him that. He's already told him he's going to have offspring, he's already told him, and so it God just repeats the promise. And and the thing that that moves Abram from doubt to faith is just a reiteration and a reaffirmation of the promise. And so we see there in verse six, and he believed the Lord and he counted to him as righteousness. And I think that that's something that we can downplay a lot. We're we we don't believe that just being reminded of the promises of God can be enough by the Spirit in our hearts to move us from doubt and uncertainty to confidence and and and faith. And yet that's what that's what happens with Abram. It's just a reiteration. I have already told you this, I'm gonna tell you again. And just the the reaffirmation, the reminder of, hey, I told you this, I am true to my word. God isn't a man that he should lie, he doesn't change his mind, as we talked about with Genesis 6. Um, so Abraham, that's that that promise reiterated by God is enough to move him from a place of doubt to a place of faith. And even I would say uh Abram's concern of him and Sarai not being able to have a child or conceive. I mean, they were they were older in years, right? Certainly from our perspective, uh, from the the logic of the medical community, maybe they shouldn't have been able to conceive. Uh, but God's limits are not our limits. God made a promise, and no physical limitation, uh, certainly with with their bodies biologically, is gonna thwart the sovereign purposes of God. So he just reiterates, I told you it was gonna happen. Telling you again, uh, my limits. God doesn't have limits, right? But his limits are not our limits. We're we're limited in in every way, right? We can't see the future, we don't know what's gonna happen. We're in a room right now. I don't even know what's happening outside the door. We're so finite. We we don't know. Uh I can have a general idea. I know Kristen's in the office, I know she's working on something. I don't know exactly what is happening, but but the Lord knows he sees all. He's not confined to a space or to a room or to limited vision or limited knowledge. God doesn't have limits, and and he is ultimately to Abram, he's gonna fulfill this promise and just that consistent reminder of that. I love how it says that and he believed the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness. This is one of the earliest examples of faith alone, right? It's faith in God alone that brings about righteousness, and from more of a clear perspective in the New Testament, it's putting your faith in Christ, trusting in him as your Messiah, receiving his righteousness, not your own, that that is credited to you or counted to you. It's your belief, it's your faith, it's your dependence and your trust on the Lord, that Jesus is who he says he is, that he did what he said he did, and that it means what he says it means. And upon putting your faith and trust in Christ, you get counted as righteous, not because of yourself, but because of the righteousness of Christ. And again, the backdrop of that for Abram is that God called Abram out of Ur of the Chaldeans. That's a pagan nation, right? They were worshiping pagan false gods, and God did that not because of status, not because uh Abram was a good guy. Perhaps Abram was even involved in the worship of these false gods, but but God chose him for no other reason than his grace, his mercy, his grace to the praise of his glorious grace. And Abraham believed, and it was counted to him as righteousness.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, something that uh I connect with when I think about to your point, Abram, a man that's worshiping likely pagan gods in a pagan nation, in a culture that's opposed to God, worshiping false gods. God God makes his way down to meet him where he's at, and he condescends. He condescends, he he he meets man where he's at, faithless, wicked, opposed to God, and and meets meets man there. And we we look forward to the New Testament, Jesus condescends in the form of a baby. He comes to earth, yeah, the promised one, the messiah, the one that that the seed of the woman that would crush the head of the serpent, and Christ comes and condescends and meets a faithless culture, a pagan culture, a pagan community worshiping false gods, or um a culture making making much of their of their religion and worshiping the religion and the practices and the routine of it all, and missing the point of of God in it. So I'm encouraged to look and say, like this this is this is the narrative. This is what we get to look at God coming down, God condescending to meet with man, God walking with man, God desiring to be um working towards restoring man back to himself.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, this is uh such a great encouragement because God set his love on a pagan in a pagan nation to preserve the promise. I mean, what what in the world? Like that doesn't make any sense, right? I mean, if you and I were gonna pick teams, we'd we'd we'd try to pick the very best, right? We'd we'd want the most talented, the most skilled, the most uh intellectual, whatever criteria that we would use. God chooses a pagan from a pagan nation. And of course, by setting his love on him, uh ultimately Abram becomes transformed. He has faith in the one true God, and he he gets saved as a result of God's pursuit of him. But that's that's how it works. God chose this pagan, and through this pagan, uh he ultimately uh preserves the promise that was made in Genesis 3.15. And that promise, uh upon belief in it, it gets counted to us as righteousness upon our faith in Christ. And this made me think of Psalm 15, our other text for today. Uh, the question on the table, who shall dwell on your holy hill? Actually, we just this past year did a whole summer camp themed off of this. It was called the Ascent. And the the question was, who will dwell? Who's gonna dwell in your holy hill? You were involved in that, Tyler.

SPEAKER_01:

I was there, I was I was uh You were horse, I was leading the the the games crew, and night one. I asked the students over and over again, does that make sense? And I was explaining the rules, I was I was explaining the intensity, the the purpose. But you said it with a little bit more gravity. I was I was I was screaming. I was screaming, it was a meme. The kids were screaming, I was laughing. Of course you were.

SPEAKER_00:

What is this guy doing? It was a fantastic time, but we we we did a whole summer camp based off of this uh this idea of who shall dwell in your holy hill. And the question on the table is who's gonna be able to stand in the presence of the Lord? That's verse one. The question, oh Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent, who shall dwell on your holy hill? And then it gives us this long list, he who walks blamelessly and does what is right, speaks truth in his heart, who does not slander with his tongue, does not does no evil to his uh neighbor, and on and on uh it goes. And really ultimately, what the point that we were making at the summer camp, and I think the point that connects to what we're talking about today in Genesis 5 uh 15 is that the type of person that can stand before the Lord doesn't exist. You fail all the the checkup you you you flopped every step of the way. Who who walks blamelessly? Uh who always is doing what is right, who who always speaks truth in their heart? Who who who never slanders, right? Who who never does evil to his day? I mean, uh none of us measure up to this list. And so where are we left with? Well, we're left with uh the here's a theological phrase for it, the imputed righteousness of Christ. Or on the cross, what Christ receives is your sin, and what you receive upon believing in Christ and the cross and his work is his righteousness. That's imputed, it's credited to you, it's counted to you as righteousness upon your faith. And it's that person who can be said to be blameless, not because of their own righteousness, but because of the righteousness that is foreign to them that's given to them. And that makes me think of one of my favorite songs right now is the song All Sufficient Merit. And even just the opening verse, it says, All sufficient merit. You could even say righteousness, merit, favor, right? Shining like the sun, a fortune I inherit by no work I have done. By grace you have been saved, Paul talks about, right? My righteousness I forfeit at my savior's cross, whatever that might be. It's filthy rags. You know, spoiler, it's filthy rags, the Bible tells us. My righteousness I forfeit at my savior's cross, where all sufficient merit did what I could not. And Psalm 15 points us in that direction. We're not going to measure up to this list. You're not going to be considered blameless. You're not going to do what's right all the time. You're not going to be someone that doesn't slander ever or never once in your life. Or you're just this this list is an impossible list. And so where do we go? Well, we go to the one whom is blameless. We go to the one who has always done right. We we go to the one who who never spoke anything but the truth. And that's Christ our Lord. And upon believing in Him, right, just like Abram, it will be counted to you as righteousness.

SPEAKER_01:

We have God's stamp of approval on our lives, on our soul, because of what the cross has accomplished through the Savior. We are approved. We can stand in front of God blameless. We have uh we have nothing to bring, as as a a pastor once said, many times has said, the only thing we bring to the equation is what is our sin. That's the only thing we bring. And and what do we get in exchange? Riches upon riches upon riches upon riches. We we have Christ's righteousness accredited to us.

SPEAKER_00:

And that's what again in Genesis fifteen, fear not, I am your shield, your reward shall be very great. Even in the Beatitudes, Jesus says something similar. Blessed are those who are persecuted for my sake, for for great is your reward. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And so we want to give thanks to the God that sets his sights on pagans, on those who are far from him. Because here's what Paul says such were some of you. You know, in Ephesians chapter 2, deaden your trespasses and sins, just giving in to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that does not work, and the sons of disobedience, which you yourselves once were once were. You once walked. And so in that sense, you you should consider yourself, you are from Ur of Chaldeans. And yet God chose to pursue you, God chose to love you, and God chose uh to make you what you could never be apart from the perfect work of his son. And that's a great, great reminder from God's covenant with Abram from Psalm 15. We hope that that's something that you treasure in your heart today. Well, thanks for joining us today on the Lamp and Light Bible Reading Podcast. For more information about Compass Bible Church South Valley, visit compass Bible SV.org. Keep reading, keep growing. God's word is a lamp to your feet and a light to your path.