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Lamp and Light Bible Reading Plan
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!
Lamp and Light Bible Reading Plan
February 4, 2026 - Genesis 30 & Psalm 26
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We trace Genesis 30’s family rivalry and the hidden engine of envy, then move to Psalm 26 to learn how integrity steadies us when results tempt us to cut corners. We challenge the habit of assigning God’s approval to any outcome that works in our favor and call for honest self-examination.
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 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 Wednesday, February 4th, 2026. Here's a quick summary of Genesis 30. Now there is a lot happening here, but we've got the sisters, Rachel and Leah, kind of dueling for their husband's attention, for his approval, for his affection, and they are giving him their servants so that they can have children together. And so Jacob ends up being a father from four different women as a result of this passage, both Rachel and Leah, and both of their individual servants, and there's some tension as a result of that in the family. But there's also uh some just evidence of God being in charge and God just sovereignly working, even in the midst of all of that. And so God is providing children through the servants and providing children through Leah and Rachel. And at the end of the chapter, Laban uh goes to Jacob, or really Jacob goes to Laban and wants to leave and kind of head back to the promised land. And Laban rightfully is kind of like, hey, I don't want you to leave. Things have been pretty good with you around. And so Jacob obviously makes a plan to prosper him, to prosper Laban on his way out, and just to show one last final uh measure of good faith in uh just the story of the different animals and the spots and which one that Jacob would would choose versus which one Laban uh would be given. And uh really that's the story of Genesis 30 is just the the back and forth between Rachel, Leah, Jacob, and the servants, servants, and then Laban and Jacob kind of working out a deal uh for Abraham and his family to move on to the land that God had promised.
SPEAKER_01:Listen intently to God's written word, Psalm twenty-six. Vindicate me, O Lord, for I have walked in my integrity, and I have trusted in the Lord without wavering. Prove me, O Lord, and try me. Test my heart and my mind, for your steadfast love is before my eyes, and I walk in your faithfulness. I do not sit with men or falsehood, nor do I consort with hypocrites. I hate the assembly of evildoers, and I will not sit with the wicked. I wash my hands in innocence, and go around your altar, O Lord, proclaiming thanksgiving aloud, and telling all your wondrous deeds. O Lord, I love the habitation of your house and the place where your glory dwells. Do not sweep my soul away with sinners, nor my life with bloodthirsty men, and whose hands are evil devices, and whose right hands are full of bribes. But as for me, I shall walk in my integrity, redeem me, and be gracious to me. My foot stands on level ground in the great assembly, I will bless the Lord.
SPEAKER_00:Tyler, this chapter in Genesis is a wild ride. It's hard to read. It's cringy. Yeah, it is. That's a good word. Cringy. It's hard to read. There's a lot of family drama. In fact, I would even say Genesis 30 is a masterclass in family drama, envy, and bitterness. I mean, that's how it opens up right there in verse one, Tyler. It says, When Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, she envied her sister. And what does she do? Well, she doesn't handle that well. She goes to Jacob and says, Give me children or I shall die, starts making demands. Uh instead of give me liberty or give me death, she says, Give me children or I shall die. Wow. And just a lot of tension we see between these two sisters, Rachel and Leah, even some tension between Jacob and both of his wives, specifically with Leah, but also with Rachel, as he responds and just says, Listen, am I in the place of God who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb? So even in his response of frustration, there ironically is an acknowledgement of the sovereignty of God over this whole situation.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, the the things that I've I find uh just from a family dynamic, and you might have some experience if you're listening to this to some family conflict either now or in the past, uh, this is this is a great reminder for us to to look to our left, to look to our right, to to be interacting with our siblings in a way that that thinks about how God would want us to love them, how God would want us to treat them. Um and this is a prime example of of what not to do. If you if you're listening to this and you have a sister, or if you're listening to this and you have a brother, um to a certain degree, sibling rivalries are are can be fun, can be harmless, can be playful. Uh this is not that. And uh we see the the effects of the effects of uh of what a a well-meaning wife can do when she's trying to please her husband, trying to uh to honor, to gain his respect, to get to gain his attention in a way that's good, but going about it in a way that that's not pleasing to the Lord, using kind of a backhanded way to like even looking at the scoreboard of how many children uh I have compared to to my sibling, it's just a it's a big mess, like you were uh speaking to to to kick us off. But I think there's just a um an acknowledgement that all of us can look into ourselves and say, like, hey, there's there's some room for me to introspect here as I'm as I'm considering my relationship with my siblings, as I'm considering my relationship with my spouse. There's some room for us to grow and to learn from this, though. We might not uh make a direct connection and kind of well, we can't say, I'll have been there, done that. Uh it'd be rare for any of us to have those those thoughts concerning this chapter in Genesis, but there is some room for us to grow and the ways that we're living our lives with our siblings.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I want to I want to camp out on a little bit the the first verse that we had we started with, which talks about uh Rachel envying her sister. Um, Tyler, I have a question for you. When was the last time in a life group setting, in a one-on-one meeting, that someone said, I need to confess envy? Can you think of a time when someone said that? I can't. No, I really I truly can't think of restraining.
SPEAKER_01:No.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's it's uh in some ways an insidious sin because we often don't think of it uh when we think to confess sin, or at least maybe we don't categorize it, or perhaps it could be uh even a definition or a naming issue where we don't properly name what we're feeling and what we're experiencing uh as envy and calling it for what it is. Uh, but envy is a huge deal. And you know, before we keep going, I want to actually recommend a resource on envy, a little book written by Pastor Mike Ferbaras, uh, the pastor of Compass Bower Church, Alicia Viejo, California. He wrote a book all about envy. It's called Envy, a big problem you didn't know you had. And I love that title because that gets to exactly what we were just talking about. I mean, when was the last time someone confessed envy? It feels like a rarity, if ever. And I think it's because we often don't consider it as big of a deal as we should. It's kind of like gluttony, right? How often do people say, you know, I'm I'm struggling with the sin of gluttony? Uh, we might use other words and things like that, but it just feels like we're we're not as quick to name things like envy. And envy is more than just simply wanting what someone else has, right? That's oftentimes the definition that's given. And that's true. I mean, that can be a helpful definition, but I don't feel like it's complete. It's not only that you want what someone else has, there's also a sense of entitlement behind that want. You feel like you deserve what someone else has. And that's what we see Rachel showcasing here with her sister Leah. Leah has had children at this point. She had four different sons. That was what we read in Genesis 29. And Rachel has had no sons. And Rachel looks at her sister, she looks at the blessing of the four children that her sister was given, and she says, I deserve that. It's not that she just wants children, just like Leah has it. She says, I deserve what she has. I am entitled to the very same blessing. I'm entitled to the very same thing. And what an insidious, tricky thing that can so easily be true, even in our own hearts, uh, in a thousand different ways. Envy uh can creep into our hearts, and we can say, you know, I want a husband like that person has, even if you're married, and you would say, I want the type of husband that that person has, and I am due. I am entitled uh to that. Or I want the number of kids that that family has, and I am entitled uh to that. I deserve that, I'm due those things.
SPEAKER_01:And I'm even thinking in this in this situation, Rachel might be thinking, I'm the one that he was interested in the first place. He loves me. It wasn't you, it was me. Um not not to get into the the works that that the father had uh between the sisters here, but we can look at this the sin of of wanting to have something good, wanting to have um offspring of your own, and the servant Bill Hawes offered, and uh there's there's a substitute, and we were we were talking about this before the podcast briefly about um how how these these sisters are are putting someone in their place to get something that they want and going about it in a way that's that's sinful and uh they want to be ultimately, they want to be approved, they want to be uh seen in the in a positive light um from their husband.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. No, they want to be loved and especially uh Rachel and Leah. Uh Leah is, of course, the one that has been said to be hated by uh Jacob. And and so Rachel has received a lot of the affection, but she has not received the blessing of children. So they're both getting something that the other wants in a lot of ways. Leah desires the affection that Rachel has, and Rachel desires the children that Leah has. And that's what envy does. It's looking across the aisle, it's looking at another family, it's looking at someone else's accomplishments, looking at someone else's blessing, and not just saying, you know, I also want that. It's I am due, I'm entitled to that. And again, we do that in a thousand different ways. It can be something as simple and seemingly trivial as the house that we live in. I I deserve to have as nice of a house as that person. And there can be this almost attitude of entitlement and demanding that we are given by God the same things that other people have been given. I want the kind of car, I want the kind of lifestyle, I want to look the same way, to have the same type of uh, I don't know, um, physical appearance or mental capacity, uh you name it. And envy is at the root of a lot of that. And so we need to do some heart work. And I want to encourage you, just ask yourself and reflect on have you ever confessed to envy? And if you haven't, I don't think it's because you've never committed the sin of envy. I just want to say that. I think it's because we often don't give envy uh the proper attention like we should. And what we see in this passage is uh what envy does, the result of it. It results in continued strain relationships between sisters uh and between uh a wife and a husband. And uh there's bitterness and rivalry. We even kind of pick up on that in verse uh 15 uh when they're talking about the mandrakes, and uh, you know, the son comes back with mandrakes, and verse 15 it says, But she said to her, Is it a small matter that you have taken away my husband? Would you take away my son's mandrakes also? That's what Leah is saying to Rachel, and so there is this bitterness and this rivalry. You can hear the tone in her voice. Is it not enough that you've stolen my husband? Which again is the great irony because Jacob wanted to marry Rachel all along. He was deceived, and uh Leah gets caught up in her father's transgression, and so she's harmed in the process, and everyone is just being uh spun up in their sin, right? And in their envy, specifically Rachel and Leah going in both directions. And what's interesting is in verse 18, there's some um some things going on here with the mandrakes, those those were seen as some kind of medicinal um, you know, option for helping with fertility. And so that that's one of the reasons why Rachel desires the the mandrakes, and they they kind of strike this deal, and um you know, she says to Jacob, You must come into me. Uh, we must have a sexual relationship right now, for I have hired you with my son's mandrakes. So he lay with her that night, and God listened uh to Leah, and she conceived and bore Jacob uh a fifth son. And Leah said, God has given me my wages because I gave my servants to my husband. So she called his name Issachar. Now, what's fascinating is the rationale that Leah gives for all of this, right? She she's literally saying, God has given me my wages what I'm due because I gave my servant to my husband, right? Which is a twisted thing to say, honestly, right? Like that God is answering your prayer because you gave your husband to another woman. I mean, that that's just that's an inaccurate statement, right, Tyler? Wrong. Yeah, it's it's it's wrong. And what but what she's doing is that she's assigning a positive outcome, and I should say a positive outcome that certainly God is in control of and he's sovereign over, but he's a she's assigning a positive outcome uh to God's sovereign hand, in the sense of God made this happen. God provided because of this. And and she's sort of playing the part uh of assigning outcomes uh to God. And of course, uh having more than one wife is outside of God's design. And part of the part of the the even the flow of this chapter is to help us see the devastating effects of polygamy or having more than one wife, uh, that's not God's design. And it's not explicitly condemned here, but Moses is trying to make it clear just through how all of this is unraveling and how the tension is high and the fighting is constant, that that this is not good. This is not God's design. And certainly, uh, with already uh two wives giving your husband to a servant uh to have children, some other alternative way, which is reminiscent, by the way, of some other people that we've read about in Genesis. That that is not honoring to the Lord. And yet, because there's a positive outcome of being blessed with another child, she says, God has given me my wages because my grand plan uh seemed to work. I gave my servant to my husband. So she called his name uh Issachar. So I just want to warn us uh to be careful of assigning outcomes to God. Um I I've seen this just over the years where people uh they'll do things that are questionable at best and outright sinful at worst, and they'll say, But the Lord provided, the Lord directed, the Lord gave me. Uh and so often we can excuse and rationalize and sort of assign outcomes to God as if he's the one co-signing sin. He's the one that's given a thumbs up uh to just the mess that we can sometimes get into. Uh, or even if we do things that are sinful and wrong and unwise and they still end up uh in a positive result, we'll go, see, I was right. This was God's plan for me. This is what God has been doing behind the scenes. So it's it's a good warning for us just to be cautious, overly cautious of not assigning outcomes uh to God, especially those that would be questionable at best or just outright sinful uh at worst.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, the the connection that I'm I'm even thinking of as we transition from uh Genesis to Psalms and our text today in Psalm 26 is uh is integrity. Sometimes sometimes our integrity is is tested, um, and we can we can uh like David walk in our integrity, walk in the ways that God would want us and desire us to go. Um and sometimes we can go about it like we've seen in Genesis in our reading today. We can go about it in a way and lit we can we can manipulate, we can we can go um and circumvent God's design um in order to get what we want, but in in seasons where we're waiting, we're knowing that we're doing the right thing, we know that we're honoring the Lord, and there's a time of waiting where we see the evildoers uh and in their bribes, we look at verse 10 of chapter 26, they're they're prospering, the their ways are effective, and and many times people of the world will will be just bold-faced, just proud of the schemes and tactics that are working for them that uh that are sh are deceitful, that are full of bribes. But we have a chance to see uh David a couple times here. He says, But as for me, I shall walk in my integrity. And that's a a great reminder for me, uh a reminder for us today as we read this is um integrity really matters. Um we can we cannot fear um man. We can we cannot fear the the outcomes of what people uh in this world that are um that are wicked are are gonna think of us, but ultimately we can look to God and say, I need to be honest. I'm gonna speak plainly, I'm gonna speak directly, I'm gonna speak boldly, and I'm gonna do it in a way that's loving to those people around me. And I'm gonna I'm gonna let the results, I'm just gonna hand those over to God. I'm not gonna worry about the outcomes. I'm not gonna worry about what people are gonna think of me. I'm gonna think about what God, what God approves of. And that's gonna, that's gonna shape and that's gonna dictate my decisions, that's gonna dictate how my heart, um, how my heart is doing.
SPEAKER_00:I'm just gonna just hand that over to the Lord. Yeah, and I would say in in in those circumstances, if it hasn't happened, perhaps it will at some point in the future, uh, if you are being falsely accused, if you uh motives have been wrongly assigned, or you feel like you're being misunderstood or misrepresented, which unfortunately is all too common in this life. I I want you to look at the way that David responds to that. He says, Vindicate me, O Lord, for I have walked in my integrity. He's saying, God, you you know that I I have integrity and I've trusted in the Lord without wavering. Prove me, O Lord, and try me. Test my heart and my mind, for your steadfast love is before my eyes, and I walk in your faithfulness. So in those times, if it happens to you where you feel misunderstood, misrepresented, your character is being questioned, I want to encourage you to have a knee-jerk reaction of allowing the Lord to be your defender. So often in this life, especially in our modern world, everyone's all about grabbing a megaphone or is uh hopping onto social media, um, stating their peace, telling their truth, all of that nonsense. And what we see, David, he just has a quiet confidence in the Lord, and he says, Lord, I want you to vindicate me before anyone else sees me, views me, believes I'm X, Y, and Z, or knows my character. God, I want to be seen as uh having integrity in your eyes. I want to know uh that you have tested me and you have seen the condition of my heart. And so let the Lord be your defender. And of course, in the New Testament, Paul talks about that. God himself says, right, uh, vengeance is mine, says the Lord, I will repay. And so we don't need to go out there and try to force the issue. We don't need to be like Rachel and Leah, uh, just always kind of working an angle, uh always trying to get what they feel like they are due. Uh, oftentimes we're motivated by bitterness and envy and all those different types of things. We need to entrust ourselves to the Lord, especially in moments when when we feel like we're being attacked or misrepresented. And we need to say, Lord, would you vindicate me? Would you uh be the one that that proves my character, uh, whether it's in this life or the next, would you search my heart? Would you know me? Would you try me? I have been faithful, I've walked, and just entrusting yourself into the God of the universe rather than again trying to take matters into your own hands.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I love that that line in verse two. Test my heart and my mind. We want to willingly pursue God and ask him to show us, show us where I'm wrong. If if I have a place where I'm I'm off track, if I'm sinning, bring bring it to my mind. Test my motivations, test my intentions, test my thoughts, show me where where I'm straying and and bring me back. Bring me back to where I need to be. Um and I'm I'm connecting that in our Genesis passage today to verse six. Where David's saying, I wash my hands in innocence. We need to be people that are keeping short accounts. We need to be people that are um being able to worship with our brothers and sisters left and right of us with a clear conscience, with a mind that says, We have we have unity here. There's there's no there's no undealt um uh business as far as like offenses or any wrongs that we may have done, or we we keep short accounts, we we are going the extra mile to ensure that um that we see eye to eye on matters, that we see each other's hearts. We want to be able to to go quickly confess and share, even if it's something that we have in our own mind and isn't even something uh that's actually happening outside of our minds. It's okay to go to bro to a brother and say, hey, like, hey, am I off here? Uh I've been thinking about this. Can you help me, can you help me see from a different perspective? And and there's there's a bond and a fellowship and a friendship that is established between um Christians in the bride of Christ that we we can be stronger together if we just go and say, Hey, God wants us to be unified. I want to be in step with Him. I want to be able to go and worship the Lord in my day-to-day life corporately on Sundays. And if there's anything that's between us, let's let's tease that out. Can we can we have a conversation here?
SPEAKER_00:Is there some work to be done? Absolutely. 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.