Lamp and Light Bible Reading Plan

January 30, 2026 - Genesis 26 & Psalm 22:16-31

• Josiah Smith - Compass Bible Church South Valley

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We read Genesis 26 and Psalm 22:16–31 and trace how God’s covenant faithfulness meets human weakness. Isaac repeats Abraham’s fear, yet models humility that opens a path to peace, while David’s praise points forward to Christ’s global reign.

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.

Welcome And Today’s Readings

SPEAKER_01

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 Friday, January 30th, 2026. Listen intently to God's written word. Genesis twenty six. Now there was a famine in the land, besides the former famine that was in the days of Abraham, and Isaac went to Gerar to Abimelech, king of the Philistines, and the Lord appeared to him and said, Do not go down to Egypt, dwell in the land which I shall tell you. Sojourn in this land, and I will be with you and will bless you, for to you and to your offspring I will give all these lands, and I will establish the oath that I swore to Abraham your father. I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and will give to your offspring all these lands, and in your offspring all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws. So Isaac settled in Garar. When the men of the place asked him about his wife, he said, She is my sister, for he feared to say, My wife, thinking lest the men of the place should kill me because of Rebecca, because she was attractive in appearance. When he had been there a long time, Abimelech, King of the Philistines, looked out of a window and saw Isaac laughing with Rebecca his wife. So Abimelech called Isaac and said, Behold, she is your wife. How then could you say she is my sister? Isaac said to him, Because I thought, lest I die because of her. Abimelech said, What is this you have done to us? One of the people might easily have lain with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us. So Abimelech warned all the people, saying, Whoever touches this man or his wife shall surely be put to death. And Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year a hundredfold. The Lord blessed him, and the man became rich and gained more and more until he became very wealthy. He had possessions of flocks and herds and many servants, so that the Philistines envied him. Now the Philistines had stopped and filled with earth all the wells that his father's servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father. And Abimelech said to Isaac, Go away from us, for you are much mightier than we. So Isaac departed from there and encamped in the valley of Garar and settled there. And Isaac dug again the wells of water that had been dug in the days of Abraham his father, which the Philistines had stopped after the death of Abraham, and he gave them the names that his father had given them. But when Isaac's servants dug in the valley and found there a well of spring water, the herdsmen of Garar quarreled with Isaac's herdsmen, saying the water is ours. So he called the name of the well Esek, because they contended with him. Then they dug another well, and they quarreled over that also, so he called its name Sitna, and he moved from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it, so he called its name Rhaboth, saying, For now the Lord has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land. From there he went up to Bersheba, and the Lord appeared to him the same night and said, I am the god of Abraham your father, fear not, for I am with you, and will bless you and multiply your offspring for my servant Abraham's sake. So he built an altar there and called upon the name of the Lord and pitched his tent there. And there Isaac's servants dug a well. When Abimelech went to him from Garar, with Ahazath, his advisor, and Fichal, the commander of his army, Isaac said to them, Why have you come to me, seeing that you hate me and have sent me away from you? They said, We see plainly that the Lord has been with you. So we said, Let there be a sworn pact between us, between you and us, and let us make a covenant with you, that you will do us no harm, just as we had not touched you, and have done to you nothing but good, and have sent you away in peace. You are now the blessed of the Lord. So he made them a feast, and they ate and drank. In the morning they rose early and exchanged oaths, and Isaac sent them on their way, and they departed from him in peace. That same day Isaac's servants came and told him about the well that they had dug, and said to him, We have found water. He called it Sheba, therefore the name of the city is called Bershaba to this day. When Esau was forty years old, he took Judith, the daughter of Biri, the Hittite, to be his wife, and Basmuth the daughter of Elon the Hittite, and they made life bitter for Isaac and Rebecca.

SPEAKER_00

Psalm twenty-two, verses sixteen through thirty-one. For dogs encompass me, a company of evildoers encircles me. They have pierced my hands and feet. I can count all my bones, they stare and gloat over me, they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots. But you, O Lord, do not be far off. O you my help, come quickly to my aid. Deliver my soul from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dog. Save me from the mouth of the lion. You have rescued me from the horns of the wild oxen. I will tell of your name to my brothers, in the midst of the congregation I will praise you. You who fear the Lord, praise him. All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him, and stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel, for he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him, but he has heard when he cried to him. From you comes my praise in the great congregation, my vows I will perform before those who fear him. The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied. Those who seek him shall praise the Lord. May your hearts live for ever. All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you. Your kingship belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations. All the prosperous of the earth eat and worship. Before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, even the one who could not keep himself alive. Posterity shall serve him. It shall be told of the Lord to the coming generation. They shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn, that he has done it.

Modeling Holiness And Building Legacy

SPEAKER_01

Genesis twenty-six is really the only chapter that we see devoted almost exclusively to Isaac. And there is some encouraging things about that. There's also some maybe discouraging things about that, or maybe just some uh we see the flaws of Isaac, and specifically it it should feel like some sense of deja vu, right, Tyler? Like, wait a minute. We've seen this, we've heard this, we've been there before. We have been here before. So again, if we're good Bible readers and we're reading a lot of the language, even that God says to Isaac, and the the things that Isaac says to King Abimelech, and uh just there's a lot of things repeated, both in a positive way. The things that God repeats are the same things that he says to Abraham in the covenant. He reiterates for Isaac, and certainly that's positive. But then Isaac repeats things that his father said about his wife. He wanted to throw his wife to the wolves, just like his father. And this got me thinking just about really the spiritual impact that we can have on those around us, but specifically our posterity, our uh our children, our the generations that come after us, and for good or for bad, our sin struggles can at times be reflected in our children and in their children. And I'm not saying it's some sort of curse that gets locked into the DNA of your family, but when you model something for your children or for those around you, there is a good chance and a general rule of thumb that they will adopt those things and share in some of the struggle of those things. And that's exactly what we see in Genesis 26, right? Where it talks about in verse 6. So Isaac settled in Gerar. Abraham was there first. When the men of the place asked him about his wife, he said, She is my sister, for he feared to say my wife, thinking lest the men of the place should kill me because of Rebecca. So it's it's the same thing, almost said in the exact same way, and there's one of the it feels like the same reason given. Abraham was afraid, surely they will kill me. Sarah, do me this one solid. Isaac is afraid. And so we see the some of the struggles of Abraham being passed down to his son. That's more of the negative side of this chapter. On the positive side, we also see uh some of the faith of Abraham passed down to Isaac. We see the way that he handles the situation with uh King Abimelech, who kind of basically kicks him out of the land, and he has he doesn't fight, he doesn't quarrel, he doesn't do any of that. He kind of leaves quietly, they they start taking all his wells, and it seems like he responds with uh a humility and a gentleness, and he just uh continues to ultimately I think trust in the Lord. So it's not all bad, Tyler, right? Like he's not just uh a guy that's afraid and a coward. Uh no, he's no he's someone that he struggled with the same thing as Abraham in this moment. There was a moment of weakness, a moment of fear that he gave into, but then also he had a great example in his father of what it looked like to trust the Lord. And so we see those two things uh connected. And so here at Compass Bible Church, South Valley, there's two things, and Tyler and I, you and I've I've talked about this briefly before. There's two things that are kind of on my mind and on my heart for what we're trying to accomplish as a church, right? And that's we want to live lives of holiness, and we want to build legacies of faithfulness. And lives of holiness, of course, we want to be obedient to what God has said. And we see that as an example in Abraham in verse 5. Abraham obeyed my voice, kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws. And ultimately, there is a great legacy that is preserved from Abraham's faith in Scripture. And so we want to build lives of holiness and obedience to the Lord. We also want to build legacies of faithfulness where our service to God uh is uh on display, not just for those around us, but for our children and for their children. And we we want to leave a lasting impact for the way that we demonstrated faith and the way that we pursued the Lord. So I think Genesis 26 is an encouragement for that.

Kids Imitate What We Live

SPEAKER_00

A great encouragement for me also. Um we we can look to um the the faithful men and women that have gone before us, the people that that God choose, God chose to walk with, and um as men and women choose to to follow the Lord as they choose to uh admit their shortcomings, admit their sin when they do fall, and uh get back up and and continue to pursue the Lord. And as we think about the people that are in our innermost circles, our children are always watching. Uh the things that we say are mannerisms, uh our kids pick up on. My son Shepard, he's two and a half, and because Sadie and I, we we kind of have this inside thing of like if you know, you know, we kind of like tap our temple area. And the other day, my my youngest trying picking up on knowing that it's funny, picking up on our mannerisms, is is tapping his forehead with a cheesy smile, and he's trying to make sense of all this. So whether they understand what we're doing, they they are are observing and and replicating our behavior. Now, some of that can be um a really great thing. We we should be modeling uh godly character, we should be modeling uh patience, faithfulness. We say we're gonna do something uh and we make a promise to our children, we we have to follow through. We we need to show them that they can trust um their God-given authority, and ultimately they can trust God. Um but I I think about the different ways that in uh our text today we see we see these servants um who are with uh King Abimelech, and they're saying, We see plainly that the Lord has been with you. They're observing, they're observing, they're observing Isaac a lie, and they're also observing they're they're then their front row seat of seeing this this response to like, sorry, sorry, brother, that's a wrong well, that's my well now. Nope, oh that well, my well now. And they're observing his response, like you're saying. We don't have a ton of detail, but we can we could look to the text and saying he's he's getting up without a fight and he's moving on to the next and digging again, trying again. And um, and that's an encouragement for us is if you want to translate that to like a spiritual uh perspective, you will fail, you will sin. How are you going to take your sin to the Lord? How are you gonna respond in a way that pleases him? And over the course of our life, um, my my father used to say this, and other coaches used to say this it's Tyler, it's not it's not how you start, it's how you finish. Are you gonna keep enduring? Are you gonna keep moving forward? Are you going to quit? Are you gonna walk away? Are you gonna close shop?

Endurance, Repentance, And Example

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and I think the question to summarize that we should be reflecting on is what kind of example are we setting for future generations? Uh and that doesn't necessarily you don't necessarily need to have kids um biologically to be able to talk about that or just kids in general, right? That could be in the context of the church, spiritual children. Paul talks about that with Titus and Timothy, he considers them uh his child in the faith. And and so we we want to just be asking, okay, for future generations, whether they belong to us, so to speak, as uh being a part of our family, um, or they're just a part of the family of God in the local church. We need to be asking, okay, what are we uh doing and what example are we setting for these future generations, generations? And I think Genesis 26 kind of shows us, at least in part, uh of just uh Isaac had some of the same struggles as Abraham, but he also had a great foundation of faith to look to, and we see him kind of just display both of those things uh in this chapter. Now, as we transition to Psalm 22, one thing that kind of stuck out to me was in verses 27 through 28, where David is saying, All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nation shall worship before you, for kingship belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations. And I thought about that just in connection to what we're reading in Genesis, because we've within the covenant that God made with Abraham, the Abrahamic covenant, there has been talk of nations. You'll be a father of many nations, and I will bless you, and I will provide for you. And there seems to be an extension here of David kind of experiencing some of that, but also in a forward-looking, future-oriented way, anticipating the ultimate fulfillment of that, I think eschatologically, right? Eschatology, the study of end times. And so I think we have kind of hints of the Davidic covenant and the Abrahamic covenant and how these things work together and ultimately culminate in Christ, who uh through whom all of the earth is blessed in the sense of having salvation, being their Messiah, uh their king. And there is coming a day in the future where every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. So it's good to see kind of both ends of the spectrum here, right? Of course, uh, King David is being kind of in the middle there. He's still forward-looking. The Messiah has not yet come, even in his lifetime, but we see the continuation of the promises made to Abraham. Uh David is clinging to them and he's looking forward to them in a different way. Uh, but ultimately we are still looking forward to now that we're on the other side of Christ's coming, him dying, him paying for our sins, the gospel, of course, being uh active today and saving and transforming lives, we're still looking forward to the day uh where all of the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord. And so I just thought that was a great connection between these two texts that we're reading today.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I definitely agree. And in uh the the second half of our psalm text today, I I couldn't help but feel uh undertones of a congregational worship uh and self-counsel. We can look to these these uh verses from from 22 down to 26 and and look and use it as a template for for us to uh to bring God worship, but both in uh individually, but also um alongside brothers and sisters in Christ, reminding each other um and praising the Lord for what he has done. Now we we can claim to be the offspring of Abraham as we are grafted in, if you're not uh of Jewish heritage, but we can we can look to this text and and be encouraged to look forward to Sunday. It's it's my favorite, it's my favorite day of the week. Thursdays are probably second favorite. That's when my life group groups, yeah. Shout out to life groups if you're in one. We'll see you uh if you're not, yeah. What are you doing? Hop on in. Come on, join a life group, please. Water's fine, shameless plug. Um, so this this environment that we are choosing to meet together or choosing to remind ourselves of the glory that God is due for what he's done. That's that's something that I'm pulling out of this text today.

SPEAKER_01

Amen. Well, thanks for joining us today on the Lamp and Light Bible Reading Podcast. 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.