July 2, 2026 - Deuteronomy 4 & Psalm 125

Moses’s repeated commands in Deuteronomy 4 confront our tendency to forget God and treat obedience as optional. We connect Psalm 125 and Matthew 7 to show how trust, warning, and grace fit together for a life built on God’s word. 

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 Deuteronomy 4 Overview

SPEAKER_01 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 loving away. I'm Josiah Smith, joined by Tyler Sanborn. Today is Thursday, July 2nd, 2026. Here's a quick summary of Deuteronomy 4. Deuteronomy 4 are instructions given by Moses towards the end of his life, specifically as Israel is preparing to enter into the promised land. I'm leaving the heading in my Bible says Moses commands obedience. And so Moses reiterates the commands, he reiterates the covenants, and he encourages commitment on behalf of the nation of Israel to stay true to the commands and the covenant that God has made with them. God is their God, he chose them as a nation out of a nation. He talks about that in Deuteronomy 4. God has displayed how he is the one true God. There is no other God like Him. Even looking at verse 39, know therefore today and lay it to your heart that the Lord is God in heaven above, and on the earth beneath, there is no other. Therefore you shall keep his statutes and his commandments, which I command you today, that it may go well with you, and with your children after you, and that you may prolong your days in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for all time. So it's again just a a sense of Moses reiterating, you need to follow God's commands, you need to renew your commitment, and you need to remember God's covenant.

Psalm 125 And Steady Trust

SPEAKER_00 1:45

Listen intently to God's written word. Psalm one twenty-five. Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever. As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people from this time forth and forevermore. For the scepter of wickedness shall not rest on the land allotted to the righteous, lest the righteous stretch out their hands to do wrong. Do good, O Lord, to those who are good, and to those who are upright in their hearts, but those who turn aside to their crooked ways, the Lord will lead away with evildoers. Peace be upon Israel.

Guard Your Soul From Forgetting

SPEAKER_01 2:31

Now Deuteronomy four, Tyler, really is kind of a repetitious chapter, but for good reason. Because as we've talked about often, even on this podcast, whether it was Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, or Numbers, we need to remember what God has commanded. And we can so easily have spiritual amnesia. We can forget. And so in this chapter, even in verse 1, oh now, Israel, listen to the statutes and the rules that I am teaching you, and do them that you may live. Even in verse 9, only take care and keep your soul diligently. Verse 15, therefore, watch yourselves very carefully. So again and again and again, there is this consistent refrain to listen, to keep, to watch, to remember, to remember who God is, to remember what he did. Uh even in verse 34, or has any God ever attempted to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation by trials, by signs, by wonders, and by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by great deeds of terror, all of which are the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes. So there's this sense of remember what God did in Exodus, in and through the Exodus event, remember who he is, remember the covenant that he has made, listen to the statutes, keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life, make them known, it says to your children and your children's children. So just some consistent reiteration from Moses to Israel to remember. And again, that's such that's such a simple thing. And sometimes we can kind of scoff at the simple truth and lessons in life. We know that uh even ourselves as adult Christians, we recognize that we are so easy and forgetting. We easily forget, right? We easily um can get even lost in our own sort of self-reliance and our own sinful desires. And so we need to listen. We need to keep our uh watch of our souls, we need to watch ourselves very carefully, as it says here in Deuteronomy 4. So some great reminders uh from Moses to Israel and even to us today through this chapter.

SPEAKER_00 5:07

Yeah, a big part of um remembering, uh following after the the Lord, uh uh a big part of that is those who are trusting in the Lord, those who are remembering his commandments and his statutes. And uh those who are are kept by the Lord, of course, are are not taken away from him, uh, for they endure. But uh we see uh that in Psalm 125, God is continually protecting and sustaining uh his people. And uh the charge for for uh God's people are to continue to to do good, continue to strive after him and uh uh live a life that is upright in heart. And we we see that in verse 4 of Psalm 125. Um the psalmist says, Do good, O Lord, to those who are good and to those who are upright in their hearts. And that that takes an act of participation of observing the law, observing what God has commanded his people to do, and then simply going and doing exactly that. Go and follow after the Lord as he would lead them in a way that would please him, in a way that would be righteous. But as Christians that would look back to the Old Testament and look back to those who um who would say, Upright in heart and be like, what do you mean, upright in heart? What it's uh it's a heart that is that is wicked and opposed to God without Christ, without his spirit in us. And we can look to what the cross has done for us, we can look to what the spirit is actively doing in the hearts of believers and say, uh, the only reason I can say I have an upright heart is because the Lord has placed a new heart in me. He has put his own spirit in me so that I might walk in a way that would

Obedience, Idolatry, And Scattering

SPEAKER_00 6:50

please him.

SPEAKER_01 6:50

Yeah, and just even going back to Deuteronomy 4, one of the things that stuck out to me in the first couple of verses, uh, verses one and two, uh it says, And now, O Israel, listen to the statutes and the rules that I am teaching you, and do them that you may live and go in and take possession of the land that the Lord the God of your fathers is giving you. So I couldn't help but think of Matthew 7, where Jesus says, Whoever hears these words of mine and does them will be like the wise man who builds his house on the rock. There's clearly even an intentional sort of allusion there by Jesus in his teaching in the New Testament in the Sermon on the Mount to what we're seeing here in Deuteronomy 4. It's the same language. Now, O Israel, listen to the statutes and the rules that I am teaching you, and do them that you may live and go in and take possession of the land. And then later on in the chapter talks about being blessed, and that's exactly what Jesus says. He gives this whole sermon, Matthew 5, 6, and 7. And how does he end it? Whoever hears these words of mine and does them will be like the wise man. So it's an issue of blessing, it's an issue of obedience. Uh, and so even later on, there's a reminder of the disobedience that has happened in the past and the idolatry that has taken hold in the hearts of the Israelites. Verse 3, your eyes have seen what the Lord did at Baal Peor, for the Lord your God destroyed from among you all the men who followed the Baal of Paor. And this is from Numbers 25, where it says, While Israel lived in Shidam, the people began to whore with the daughters of Moab. These invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods. So Moses is reminding them, do you remember what God did to those who did not listen and did not obey? Remember the idolatry that has snuck in, remember the craftiness of sin, remember the uh the way that these Israelites so easily let their hearts be swayed to worship of a false god. So there's even uh talk later on about these other sort of false gods, and um, if if they weren't going to listen, if they weren't going to listen and obey the statutes, as it starts in in verses one and two, it says that God's going to scatter them. He's going to scatter them from um, you know, I I think of even verse 26, like call heaven and earth to witness against you today that you will soon utterly perish from the land that you're going over the Jordan to possess. You will not live in it, but will be utterly destroyed. Um and the Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the Lord will drive you. Um and there will and there you will serve gods of wood and stone, the work of human hands that neither see nor hear, nor eat, nor smell. But from there you will seek the Lord your God and you will find him. So there's a reminder and a warning. If you don't do this, if you don't listen, God's going to scatter them from this land. They're going to be taken captive by foreign enemies, they're going to be forced to worship false gods of wood and stone, those who are the work of human hands. And ultimately, this is sort of a prophetic text because this is exactly what happens to Israel. If we keep reading uh in the Old Testament, as we will here on the Lamp and Light Bob Reading Plan, we're going to get to God doing just this. God is going to scatter them through several captivities. The main one being the Babylonian captivity that we've talked a little bit about in our study of the Psalms, because the Psalms look back on that reality, some of them, and lament. But we see here again just this consistent reminder that God alone is God, the Lord alone is God. He is worthy of our listening to his statutes, of our obeying, listening to the statutes, and doing them that you may live, that it may go well with you. Only take care and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and let them depart from your heart. So just a consistent, clear refrain here in Deuteronomy 4 of the reality of obedience in the life of those who are worshiping the Lord, uh, and just the reminder of the seriousness of idolatry from Numbers 25 in the life in the history of Israel, the recent history of Israel, and and the resulting consequences that came as a result from God Himself.

God Near To Us And Keep Reading

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Yeah, as I I think about the the previous Psalms that we've uh studied, Pastor Josiah, I think back as I just dip into the first eight verses of Deuteronomy chapter four, Psalm 119, and all the the wisdom and uh and all the statutes and the the insights and the precepts of the Lord and how they're good and how the wisdom of the Lord um helps helps us understand. It gives us knowledge and understanding beyond that of our enemies, wisdom beyond that of the teacher, and the wisdom and an understanding that is not by not crafted by human discipline or or the work of our own minds and and efforts, but wisdom that is divine in nature that comes from above. And uh, verse 7 stands out to me in Deuteronomy chapter 4. Um, we read, For what great nation is there that has a God so near to it as the Lord our God is to us whenever we call upon him, and what a great encouragement that is for us to continually call out the Lord to help uh to help ourselves um just declare dependence on him because it is easy for us to forget. It is easy for us to wander if we stray from the law of the Lord, if we stray from his scripture, and what a great encouragement for us. If you're if you're catching up in the Bible reading plan and you maybe you've had a week or so off, or you're trying to catch back up, just remember the refreshment and the and the joy it is that we have God's very word breathed out in scripture, and it's right here written for us to read, uh to remember and to obey, and uh the wisdom that comes from it is for our good and for for our joy. Amen.

SPEAKER_01 12:46

And I think even that's what you mentioned earlier in Psalm 125. This request and this prayer, do good, O Lord, to those who are good and to those who are upright in their hearts. There's a sense of um, of course, no one does good, no one seeks after God, but it God is by his spirit regenerating us, giving us a new heart, uh, us being born again uh to a living hope. We are given the righteousness of Christ, and we can pray that the Lord would bless us, that the Lord would um protect us, that he would keep us, that he will preserve us, that uh he will be true to his promises that he has made to us in Christ Jesus. And we can pray, along with uh the Israelites here in Psalm 125, to do good, O Lord, to those who are good and to those who are upright in their heart. And we can pray that the Lord would grow us in that reality.

Closing Thanks And Final Charge

SPEAKER_01 13:36

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 dot org. Keep reading, keep growing. God's word is a lamp to your feet and a light to your path.