March 26, 2026 - Exodus 23 & Psalm 68:19-35

We read Exodus 23 and Psalm 68:19-35 and see how God sets his people apart through justice and care for the poor and the sojourner. We also talk about why God bakes rhythms of rest and remembrance into life so our calendars train our hearts to rejoice in his salvation. 

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. 

Transcript

Welcome And Today’s Reading Plan

SPEAKER_00 0:01

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 Thursday, March 26th, 2026. Listen intently to God's written word. Exodus twenty-three. You shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with a wicked man to be a malicious witness. You shall not fall in with the many to do evil, nor shall you bear witness in a lawsuit, siding with the many so as to pervert justice, nor shall you be partial to a poor man in his lawsuit. If you meet your enemy's ox or his donkey going astray, you shall bring it back to him. If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying down under its burden, you shall refrain from leaving him with it, you shall rescue it with him. You shall not pervert the justice due to your poor in his lawsuit. Keep far from a false charge, and do not kill the innocent and righteous, for I will not acquit the wicked. And you shall take no bribe, for a bribe blinds the clear sighted and subverts the cause of those who are in the right. You shall not oppress a sojourner. You know the heart of a sojourner, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. For six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield, but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie follow, that the poorer of your people may eat, and what they leave the beasts of the field may eat. You shall do likewise with your vineyard and with your olive orchard. Six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall rest, that your ox and your donkey may have rest, and the son of your servant woman and the alien may be refreshed. Pay attention to all that I have said to you, and make no mention of the names of other gods, nor let it be heard on your lips. Three times in the year you shall keep a feast to me. You shall keep the feast of unleavened bread, as I commanded you, you shall eat unleavened bread for seven days at the appointed time in the month of Abib, for in it you came out of Egypt. None shall appear before me empty handed. You shall keep the feast of harvest, of the first fruits of your labor, of what you sow in the field. You shall keep the feast of ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in from the field the fruit of your labor. Three times in the year you shall all your males appear before the Lord God. You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with anything leavened, or let the fat of my feast remain until the morning. The best of the first fruits of your ground you shall bring into the house of the Lord your God. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother's milk. Behold, I send an angel before you to guard you on the way, and to bring you to the place that I have prepared. Pay careful attention to him and obey his voice, do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgression, for night for my name is in him. But if you carefully obey his voice and do all that I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries. When my angel goes before you and brings you to the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, and I blot them out, you shall not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do as they do, but you shall utterly overthrow them and break their pillars in pieces. You shall serve the Lord your God, and he will bless your bread and your water, and I will take sickness away from among you. None shall miscarry or be barren in your land. I will fulfill the number of your days. I will send my terror before you, and will thrown into confusion all the people against whom you shall come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. And I will send hornets before you, which shall drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites from before you. I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild beasts multiply against you. Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased and possessed the land, and I will set your border from the Red Sea to the Sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness to the Euphrates, for I will give the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you shall drive them out before you. You shall make no covenant with them and their gods. They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against me. For if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

Psalm sixty eight, verses nineteen through thirty-five. Blessed be the Lord, who daily bears us up. God is our salvation, our God is a God of salvation, and to God, the Lord, the long deliverances from death. But God will strike the heads of his enemies, the hairy crown of him who walks in his guilty ways. The Lord said, I will bring them back from Bashan, I will bring them back from the depths of the sea, that you may strike your feet in their blood, that the tongues of your dogs may have their portion from the foe. Your procession is seen, O God, the procession of my God, my king, into the sanctuary, the singers in front, the mu musicians last, between them virgins playing tambourines. Bless God in the great congregation, the Lord, O you who are of Israel's fountain. There is Benjamin, the last of them, in the lead, the princes of Judah in their throng, the princes of Zebulum, the princes of Naphtali. Summon your power, O God, the power, O God, by which you have worked for us, because of your temple at Jerusalem, kings shall bear gifts to you. Rebuke the beasts that dwell among the reeds, the herd of bulls with the calves of the peoples, trample underfoot those who lust after tribute, scatter the peoples who delight in war. Nobles shall come from Egypt, Cush shall hasten to stretch out her hands to God. O kingdoms of the earth, sing to God, sing praises to the Lord, to him who rides in the heavens, the ancient heavens. Behold, he sends out his voice, his mighty voice, ascribe power to God, whose majesty is over Israel, and whose power is in the skies. Awesome is God from his sanctuary, the God of Israel, he is the one who gives power and strength to his people. Blessed be God.

Justice For Poor And Sojourner

SPEAKER_00 6:25

Well, in Exodus 23, we continue to see more laws, the nitty-gritty of the inner workings interpersonally with the nation of Israel. And of course, there's laws about the uh inner workings of business, laws about lawsuits, laws about uh any number of things. But even in verse two, it says, You shall not fall in with the many to do evil, nor shall you bear witness in a lawsuit, siding with the many so as to pervert justice, nor shall you be partial to a poor man in his lawsuit. So we're getting into some more specifics as to partiality and perverting justice. Verse six says, You shall not perverse the pervert the justice due to your poor in his lawsuit. God cares about justice, God cares specifically even about the poor and the needy. Uh, it talks about in verse nine, you shall not oppress a sojourner. Why? Because you know the heart of a sojourner, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. And that's repeated even from Exodus 22. Exodus 22, verse 21 says something very similar. You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land. And so God has a consistent theme of caring for those who are oppressed, caring for those who are considered poor for the nation of Israel, not perverting justice, uh, not stacking the deck in a lawsuit so you could kind of win and get, you know, whatever he were trying to accomplish through that. Uh God cares about all of those things.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

Yeah, you know what I'm thinking, uh, Pastor Josiah, is as I'm thinking about the future exile that that Jerusalem um will experience, their plundering, the destruction that comes, and and what is leading up to Israel being cast into exile, it's injustice, it's people not treating the poor well, it's justice being perverted, um, people who stand at the gate and and wink an eye or or just uh or or deal unjustly. Um a lot of these things are happening, and it and it's what God is explicitly telling them not to do right here in Exodus.

Sabbath Feasts And Firstfruits Rhythms

SPEAKER_00 8:36

Yeah, and even in verse 8, it says, You shall take no bribe, for a bribe blinds the clear-sighted and subverts the cause of those who are in the right. So God again is talking about justice and in a sense from a legal perspective, uh, not taking bribes, not stacking the decks in lawsuits, and kind of again getting into the nitty-gritty of the inner workings of relationships in the context of Israel and the people of God. Now, one thing that I want to focus on in Exodus 23 is the institution of these laws about the Sabbath and festivals. So we see it beginning in verse 10 for six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield, but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie followed, that the poor, there it is again, of your people may eat, and what they leave for the beasts of the field may eat, you shall do likewise with your vineyard and with your olive orchard. And then there's the institution uh we've already seen of the un the feast of unleavened bread, the feast of harvest in this chapter, and then the feast of ingathering. And and really you can see kind of at a broad level that God is instituting patterns within the calendar year for the nation of Israel to remember, to reflect, uh, to rest, and ultimately, if we're gonna stick with ours, to rejoice in who God is to worship him. And so there's these patterns and rhythms, both on a weekly level, six days you shall work, on the seventh you shall rest, both at the yearly level, six years you shall work, the seventh, there's a sense of rest, and even multiple times a year, with the the feast of harvest, the feast of in ingathering. There's the idea of the first fruits of your labor. This is verse 16 of what you sow in the field are to be offered to the Lord, giving your best, giving your most plentiful things to the Lord as an act of sacrifice to him, an act of worship to him, recognizing what he did in delivering the nation of Israel out of Egypt and praising him as uh a result. Now, this is uh I made this joke to you, Tyler, the other day. I don't I don't remember the context, but uh the a silly illustration in my mind is from Toy Stoy, right? Where the claw machine and they they rescue them out of the claw machine and they say, uh, you have saved our lives, we are eternally grateful. Uh and of course they they repeat it over and they follow him around and and they're and he's like, get away from me. Um but in a sense, right? Uh in a much more serious sense, that's what the nation of Israel is supposed to do. They're supposed to look at Yahweh and say, You have saved our lives, we are eternally grateful. And we're gonna build our entire calendar around that reality and the rhythms of our week, six days of work, seventh is a rest, the rhythms of our year are gonna be given over to remembering and responding and reflecting and rejoicing in who God is. So now, of course, in our context, we're not doing the same rhythms in terms of the Sabbath as it's outlined here, or the feast of unleavened bread, or the feast of harvest, or the feast of in-gathering. But nevertheless, I do believe the principle should still very much be alive and active in our hearts and in our rhythms and in our church today, that we should have some level of rhythm specifically to our days, to our weeks, and to our years, where we do rest and we do reflect and we do rejoice in the Lord. And we ourselves say, You have saved our lives. We are eternally grateful. We recognize the work that God has accomplished in Christ, this new Exodus that we have seen God's power on display. Uh, he may not have split the Red Sea like he did in the Old Testament, uh, but certainly he uh split open uh the um the sin that entangled us and led us through the waters of our sin so that we could go to the other side and find salvation in Christ. So much to rejoice in. And we need these patterns, Tyler. We need a regular rhythm of doing this.

Traditions That Shape Christian Life

SPEAKER_01 12:37

You might even say you can call them traditions, traditions of remembering, traditions of pausing and reflecting. Tradition. It's uh it's a loaded word for me. And uh as I um 12 years ago or in change, I I married Sadie, and and and with this marriage came a lot of traditions, a lot of things that her family did to remember, to celebrate, to reflect. Um, and and a lot of it was foreign to me and it was uncomfortable to me. But now that I think about it, pausing and being excited and remembering God's goodness and being with the people uh in your family, and specifically in this context, if we're looking at the scriptures, the people of God, we should be meeting and making a habit of, or even a tradition, of getting together and reflecting and remembering God's goodness.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

And of course, in the New Testament, uh we are not bound to the Sabbath in the same way that the nation of Israel was here in Exodus. Even Paul talks about in Romans that we are to each esteem one day better than another and let each be convinced in their own mind. And Romans 14 talks a lot about the conscience and how we're to handle those issues, but nevertheless, the the principle of the rhythm, the reflection, the the repetition, that should certainly mark a Christian's life. It may not be as structured and organized as the six days and the seventh being a rest, or the six years and the seventh, you know, all of those things in the feast of in-gathering and harvest and unleavened bread, but we should certainly have a weekly, I would even say daily rhythm. Uh, we should build our calendars, our yearly calendars around what it is that God has done, the work that He has accomplished in our lives, uh, even the reality of the church existing on earth is a tangible representation of the grace of God working in the world. And so we should throw ourselves into a rhythm of celebration, a rhythm of rejoicing. And I think we see that from the earliest days of God forming his people as a part of that formation. He's saying, remember, reflect. There's a repetition. There, there is tradition. And of course, tradition can be something that can get us off track. Jesus says that in Mark chapter 7, you have a fine way of ignoring the commandments of God to establish the traditions of men. So we don't want to get there, but we do want these rhythms and we do want these patterns. And it's so helpful uh for us to rest, to remember, to reflect, and to rejoice in who God is and what he has accomplished and provided for us through his son, through the gospel of Jesus Christ. So I think that's a great principle for us to take away from Exodus 23, and even the whole idea of God saying, I'm gonna go before you and send my angel to kind of prepare the way for them to enter into the promised land that was promised long ago to Father Abraham, and then of course pass down to Isaac and then Jacob and now to the nation of Israel as a whole. And so God uh is going to lead them in a more in another dramatic way to conquer this land and to scatter their enemies, and that's what we will continue to read about. Uh, but that's cause for rejoicing, it's cause for remembering and reflecting. And I think that we need to think about those things in our life and establish the rhythms and the patterns from the principles that we see here in Exodus chapter 23.

The Ark Procession And Worship

SPEAKER_01 16:02

You know, I was thinking, PJ, uh, this week, um, I recently threw out my back and I'm on the mend, and I'm my my body is starting to work, my posture is getting better. Did you get out of bed too quick or what? It's dangerous. I can't. Oh no, I was lifting, I was lifting a coffee maker. That's what I was doing, a heavy coffee maker onto the counter, and I it was the first thing that I did. Uh all that to say, um it's it's God that bears us up. And we looked, we looked to our psalm today, Psalm 68, um, verses 19 to 35. And there's on the bookends of this section, it's it says, Blessed be the Lord, who in verse 19, who daily bears us up. God is our salvation, our God is a God of salvation. Um, and to God, the Lord belongs deliverances from death. Uh, and some of us have experiences where this is literally God, God spared me. I was in an accident, I was in the hospital, I was in a position where death was seemingly uh a day away or even less. Um, and if you're thinking about the people of Israel, thinking about David and his his armies, this very well could be the the literal words of like I I was surrounded, I should be dead, but God delivered us, God bared me up. And uh, as He we live in these mortal bodies, these fleshly bodies, it's it's God that sustains us, it's God that holds our our every cell together in in the work of his power. Um, and I think about just the ways that uh we see God working, and he's worthy of praise, he's worthy of uh of our our hearts' gratitude, our thanks, the the worship and exalting of the name of God that we um that we can bring with our lives and also with our voices, with our thoughts, with the things that we choose to do, the way that we interact. And um, as we look, we look to the psalm and this procession that's happening. Can you help us unpack this word procession that we see in verse 24?

SPEAKER_00 18:05

Yeah, I think this is an allusion to the procession of the Ark of the Covenant that King David led uh to place it in its proper place in the tabernacle. So there's a big kind of fanfare and hoopla in 2 Samuel chapter 6 that details some of this. Uh, but kind of you can read the language here in Psalm 68, your procession is seen, O God, the procession of my God, my king, into the sanctuary. The sanctuary, of course, being the holy of holies, the singers in front, and the musicians last, between them virgins playing tambourines. Uh, bless God in the great congregation, the Lord, O you who are of Israel's fountain. And then the the tribes of Israel all being involved in this. There's Benjamin, the least of them, and the lead, the princes of Judah and their throng, the princes of Zebulin, the princes of Naphtali, and there's a great uh kind of again fanfare of uh the Ark of the Covenant being uh brought up to Jerusalem to be placed in the tabernacle, God's dwelling place, and uh there's worship and there's praise and there's thanksgiving, and uh this is uh a psalm of reflection on that event and that reality. And I love even in verse 34, this connects to something we talked about on Sunday in the book of Hebrews. It says to ascribe power to God, whose majesty is over Israel and whose power is in the skies. And we talked about how creation really serves as a testimony to Jesus' power from Hebrews chapter 1, verse 10. Um, the heavens are the work of his hands. He laid the foundation in the beginning, and the power of God is made evident and obvious uh in the sky, it says. Uh, and even in verse 33, to him who rides in the heavens, the ancient heavens. Behold, he sends out his voice, his mighty voice, ascribed power to God, whose majesty is over Israel and whose power is in the sky. So uh creation is intended to lead us to worship, it reveals the power of God, as power is in the skies, it says, and it is to lead us to worship. And uh in the New Testament, Paul says that even the rocks cry out, right? Uh the rocks cry out to uh the reality and majesty of God. That's again Psalm 19, verse 1, the heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. So just a connection there to what we've been talking about and studying in Hebrews chapter 1, uh, that creation does, it's magnificent, it's mighty, it's powerful, it showcases the power of God. But ultimately, though that's true, it'll be rolled up, it'll perish, it'll change, but Jesus, King Jesus, uh, will remain, and his years will have no end. So lots to give thanks for, lots uh to worship God for, and we see a lot, a lot of that here outlined in Psalm 68.

All Nations Called To Praise

SPEAKER_01 20:48

Yeah. If you remember, I think it was about a week or so ago, uh, we were talking about Zechariah uh chapter 14 and the nations of of earth going to Jerusalem to worship the Lord, to worship the king. Um and I am looking to verse 32 and I'm reminded of that. It says, O kingdoms of the earth, sing to God, sing praises to the Lord, uh, to him who rides in the heavens, the ancient heavens, behold, he sends out his voice, his mighty voice. And I'm thinking about a future time when we will, I mean, if we're here, the people, the people of the nations will gather uh and they will go. They they will from from their different places on earth where they're living, they're gonna make a journey to go and worship, uh, worship Jesus in Jerusalem. And this is a great encouragement to look forward to uh eternal uh eternal time where we get to be in God's presence for all of eternity and and worship him and and live with him.

SPEAKER_00 21:51

What an encouragement that is.

SPEAKER_01 21:52

Yeah.

Final Encouragement And Closing

SPEAKER_00 21:52

Well, hopefully you've been encouraged in Exodus and in Psalms, Psalm sixty eight, uh, to just have a a rhythm. Uh you know, of praise and rejoicing in the Lord. And again, we the Sabbath and these feasts may not be binding in the same way for us that it was for Israel. But the principle is still so important for us to have our years, have our calendars, our weeks, our days built around this idea of resting in the Lord, rejoicing in him, and remembering the work that he has done. Well, thank you so much 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.