Lamp and Light Bible Reading Plan

February 10, 2026 - Genesis 35 & Psalm 31

• Josiah Smith - Compass Bible Church South Valley

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0:00 | 18:09

We trace Jacob’s return to Bethel in Genesis 35 and see how grace comes first and obedience follows, then turn to Psalm 31 to show why God acts for his name and for our good.

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, lead pastor of Compass South Valley. Today is Tuesday, February 10th, 2026. Listen intently to God's written word. Genesis 35. God said to Jacob, Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there. Make an altar there to the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau. So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, put away the foreign gods that are among you, and purify yourselves and change your garments. Then let us arise and go up to Bethel, so that I may make there an altar to the God who answers me in the day of my distress, and has been with me wherever I have gone. So they gave to Jacob all the foreign gods that they had, and the rings that were in their ears. Jacob hid them under the Terabinth tree that was there, Shechem. And as they journeyed a terror from God fell upon the cities that were around them, so that they did not pursue the sons of Jacob. And Jacob came to Luz, that is, Bethel, which is in the land of Canaan, he and all the people who were with him, and there he built an altar and called the place El Bethel, because there God had revealed himself to him when he fled from his brother. And Deborah, Rebecca's nurse, died, and she was buried under an oak below Bethel. So he called its name Alan Bakath. God appeared to Jacob again when he came from Padan Aram and blessed him. And God said to him, Your name is Jacob. No longer shall your name be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name. So he called his name Israel. And God said to him, I am God almighty, be fruitful and multiply. A nation and a company of nations shall come from you, and kings shall come from your own body. The land that I gave to Abraham and Isaac I will give to you, and I will give the land to your offspring after you. Then God went up from him in the place where he had spoken with him, and Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he had spoken with him, a pillar of stone. He poured out a drink offering on it, and poured oil on it. So Jacob called the name of the place where God had spoken with him, Bethel. Then they journeyed from Bethel. When they were still some distance from Ephrath, Rachel went into labor, and she had hard labor. And when her labor was at its hardest, the midwife said to her, Do not fear, for you have another son. And as her soul was departing, for she was dying, she called his name Ben Oni, but his father called him Benjamin. So Rachel died, and she was buried on the way to Ephrath, that is, Bethlehem, and Jacob set up a pillar over her tomb. It is the pillar of Rachel's tomb, which is there to this day. Israel journeyed on and pitched his tent beyond the tower of Eder. While Israel lived in that land, Reuben went and lay with Bilhah, his father's concubine, and Israel heard of it. Now the sons of Jacob were twelve, the sons of Leah, Reuben, Jacob's firstborn, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issach, and Zebulun, the sons of Rachel, Joseph and Benjamin, the sons of Bilhah, Rachel's servant, Dan and Neftali, the sons of Zilpah, Leah's servant, Gad and Asher, these were the sons of Jacob who were born to him in Padon Aram. And Jacob came to his father Isaac at Mamur, or Kiryath Arbah, that is Hebron, where Abraham and Isaac had sojourned. Now the days of Isaac were one hundred and eighty years, and Isaac breathed his last, and he died and was gathered to his people, old and full of days, and his sons, Esau and Jacob, buried him. Psalm thirty-one. In you, O Lord, do I take refuge. Let me never be put to shame. In your righteousness deliver me, incline your ear to me, rescue me speedily, be a rock of refuge for me, a strong fortress to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress, and for your name's sake you lead me and guide me. You take me out of the net they have hidden for me, for you are my refuge. Into your hand I commit my spirit. You have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God. I hate those who pay regard to worthless idols. But I trust in the Lord. I will rejoice and be glad in your steadfast love, because you have seen my affliction, you have known the distress of my soul, and you have not delivered me into the hand of the enemy. You have set my feet in a broad place. Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress. My eye is wasted from grief, my soul and my body also, for my life is spent with sorrow, and my years with sighing. My strength fails because of my iniquity, and my bones waste away. Because of all my adversaries I have become of a reproach, especially to my neighbors, and an object of dread to my acquaintances. Those who see me in the street flee from me. I have been forgotten like the one who is dead, I have become like a broken vessel, for I hear the whispering of many, terror on every side, as they scheme together against me, as they plot to take my life. But I trust in you, O Lord. I say you are my God, my times are in your hand. Rescue me from the hand of my enemies and from my persecutors. Make your face shine on your servant, save me in your steadfast love. O Lord, let me not be put to shame, for I call upon you, let the wicked be put to shame, let them go silently to Sheol. Let the lying lips be mute, which speak insolently against the righteous in pride and contempt. O how abundant is your goodness, which you have stored up for those who fear you, and worked for those who take refuge in you, in the sight of the children of mankind, in the cover of your presence you hide them from the plots of men, you store them in your shelter from the strife of tongues. Blessed be the Lord, for he has wondrously shown his steadfast love to me when I was in a besieged city. I had said in my alarm, I am cut off from your sight, but you heard the voice of my pleas for mercy when I cried to you for help. Love the Lord all you his saints. The Lord preserves the faithful, but abundantly repaise the one who acts in pride. Be strong and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord. Now, this past weekend at Compass Bible Church South Valley in the main service, we talked about Titus two, eleven through fifteen, and focused on the distinction between grace and good works. Because there, and specifically verses eleven through fourteen of Titus II, Paul, in the same breath and in the same sentence, talks about the grace of God that has appeared, bringing salvation to all. And he ends that same sentence by saying, God is purifying for himself, a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. We talked about the distinction between effort and earning, between grace and good works that we saw there in Titus chapter two. And we're going to see the same thing in Genesis 35 today. And really what we're going to see is that grace always precedes good works. Grace always comes before good works. In Genesis 35, verse 1, it begins by saying, God said to Jacob, Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there. Make an altar there to the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau. Now that's calling back to some earlier chapters in Genesis when God first appeared to Jacob. You remember in the dream where he laid his head on the rock and made a promise to him that he would be with him wherever he would go, and that he would protect him and provide for him, and the promises that he made to Isaac and Abraham, he was making to Jacob as well. This is calling back to that. And all of those promises, all of that protection, all of the grace on display from God is represented here in verse one. So we see the grace of God, the kindness of God to protect Jacob, to provide for Jacob. And now he has completed his journey back to the land that God had promised, and he is reminded of the grace that God spoke of all the way back when he first laid his head on that rock. If you remember, he pointed he poured the oil on, and that was the turning point for Jacob, where he was shifting from a trickster to someone that trusted in the Lord. So we see the grace of God highlighted there in verse one of Genesis 35. But then what do we see in the very next verse in verse 2? We see, you could say, as a summary, good works. So it says in verse 2 So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, put away the foreign gods that are among you, and purify yourselves and change your garments. And so we see this response to the grace of God. And that's always the order from a biblical perspective is the grace of God is given. And then there is a response. We even looked at on Sunday, 1 John chapter 3, where John the Apostle talks about what we will be has not yet appeared. And on that day, as we await that day, uh at that future day where we will be like him when we see him as he is. What does he say that we do in the meantime? In verse 3 of 1 John 3, he says, Everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. So we see the grace of God making someone a child of God. And then we see the future promise of the return of Christ. We will be like him as we will see him as he is. But then we also see in the meantime, in the present, what do we do? We pursue good works, we purify ourselves as he is pure. And that's exactly what we see here, that same sort of formula, if you want to call it that, the grace coming first, and then the good works flowing from that here in verse 2. Jacob said to his household and to all who are with him, put away the foreign gods, put off the things that are not true to the one living covenant keeping God, and purify for yourself, purify yourselves and change your garments. God displays his grace, he displays his promise keeping, and then there is a response of good works. There's a response of getting rid of these false gods, getting rid of all of these things that are not true. So it says even in verse 4 so they gave to Jacob all the foreign gods that they had and the rings that were in their ears. Jacob hid them under the Terebinth tree that was near Shechem. So again, that sort of formula, or at least making clear that grace always precedes good works. Grace is displayed, grace is given by God, and as a result, his people are called to live lives that are upright and godly in the present age, as Paul says in Titus 2. So the same thing is represented here in Genesis 35, where God displays his grace, he reminds Jacob of His grace, and then he calls Jacob and his household to live upright, godly lives as they pursue obedience to what God has commanded of them. And again, that's the formula that we see from the beginning. There is continuity between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Grace comes first, and then there is a response of good works. We talked about on Sunday the distinction, recognizing the distinction between effort and earning. We can never earn our salvation. Abraham believed and it was counted to him as righteousness. We can never earn it. But nevertheless, as we receive grace, as we're transformed by it, we are to pursue good works. That's what Paul says in Ephesians 2.10. We are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. So again, here in Genesis 35, we see the results of that. God displays his grace, and then his people respond, Jacob and his household. Now in Psalm 31 today, there's a lot of things that we could focus on, but I want to focus specifically on just a short phrase in verse three. David says, For you are my rock and my fortress, and for your name's sake, you lead me and guide me. And what David is talking about here teaches us that God acts for the glory of his name. And friends, that is good news. That is the best news. And we don't only see that in the Old Testament. Just to show you the consistency of this, we also see that just in one passage I want to point to in the New Testament, 1 John 2, verse 12, the apostle John says, I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven. For what reason? For his name's sake. God acts to bring glory to his name. And that is great news. I want to read just a short section from a book called Providence by John Piper as he talks about this idea of God's self-promotion of his name and of his glory. John Piper says, What if God's public promotion of his power or his name is less like a narcissistic, fame-hungry military general who seeks victory by sacrificing thousands of soldiers from his safe position behind the lines? And more like the truly greatest general who wins both the victory and fame by willingly dying at the front line for the troops he loves. In other words, what if, in the end, we discovered that the beauty of God turns out to be the kind that comes to climax in being shared? And what if the attitude we thought was mere self-promotion was instead the pursuit of sharing the greatest pleasure possible for all who would have it? In other words, the good news that God acts for the glory of his name is that in so doing, he is also acting for our good. And that's why David says with such confidence in Psalm 31:3, you are my rock, you are my fortress, and for your name's sake, you lead me and guide me. Do you see how those two things are connected? God is working for his name, for his glory, but as a result, as an overflow of that, David says, You lead me and you guide me. Now that can be hard for us to wrap our heads around because if we do things for our name, if we do things for our glory, it is almost certainly going to be prideful, it's going to be selfish, and it's going to be to the detriment of those around us. But the good news and the glorious news that we see here in Psalm 31.3 is that when God works for his name's sake, he also is doing that to lead us, to guide us, to be our rock, to be our fortress. And even goes on and says, You take me out of the net that you've hidden from me, for you are my refuge. And the response that David has to God working for his name and for his glory is verse 5. Into your hand I commit my spirit. You have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God. There is such a comfort, there is such a confidence in the God that works for his own name, that David says, Into your hand I commit my spirit. Where else can I go, Lord? Where else can I go? And so while it may be true that humans that work for their own name are destructive, they're selfish, they're prideful, and they harm those in the process, we see the opposite being true of the God that works for his own name. He works for his own name, for his own glory, and in so doing, as John Piper says, the pursuit of sharing the greatest pleasure possible for all who would have it. And in God working for his own name, he is also working for our good and sharing the greatest pleasure in the process, and that is having a right relationship with God. So I hope that's an encouragement for you today to think about everything that God does is for the glory of his name. And that's not something that is self-promotion. That's not narcissistic, fame-hungry military generals who just seek fame and power from the comfort of an office as they make decisions that are destructive for those who are on the front lines. No, no, no. It's much more like the truly greatest general who wins both the victory and the fame by willingly dying at the front line for the troops he loves. As God works for the glory of his name, he works for our good. And friends, we can have that response of comfort and confidence and say, along with David, into your hands, Lord, I commit my spirit. You have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God. 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.