July 9, 2026 - Deuteronomy 10 & Psalm 131

We read Deuteronomy 10 and Psalm 131, then sit with the way God renews His covenant while calling for a heart that is humble, soft, and responsive to His Word. We connect the fear of the Lord to worship and obedience, and we ask what it looks like for our souls to be calmed and quieted by Scripture. 

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

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 lighting the way. I'm Josiah Smith, joined by Tyler Sanborn. Today is Thursday, July 9th, 2026. Listen intently to God's written word.

Deuteronomy 10 Read Aloud

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Deuteronomy 10. At that time the Lord said to me, Cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and come up to me on the mountain and make an ark of wood, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets that you broke, and you shall put them in the ark. So I made an ark of acacia wood, and cut two tablets of stone like the first, and went up the mountain with the two tablets in my hand. And he wrote on the tablets, in the same writing as before, the ten commandments that the Lord had spoken to you on the mountain out of the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly, and the Lord gave them to me. Then I turned and came down from the mountain, and put the tablets in the ark that I had made, and there they are as the Lord commanded me. The people of Israel journeyed from Baroth Benajakon to Masara. There Aaron died, and there he was buried, and his son Elieazar ministered as priest in his place. From there they journeyed to Gudgeda, and from Gidgeda to Jotpatha, a land with brooks of water. At that time the Lord set apart the tribe of Levi to carry the ark of the covenant of the Lord, to stand before the Lord to minister to him and to bless in his name to this day. Therefore Levi has no portion or inheritance with his brothers. The Lord is his inheritance, as the Lord your God said to him. I myself stayed on the mountain, as at the first time, forty days and forty nights, and the Lord listened to me that time also. The Lord was unwilling to destroy you. And the Lord said to me, Arise, go on your journey at the head of the people, so that they may go in and possess the land which I swore to their fathers to give them. And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all of your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord which I am commanding you today for your good. Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. Yet the Lord set his heart and love on your fathers, and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples as you are this day. Circumcise, therefore, the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn. For the Lord your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe. He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Love the sojourner that therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. You shall fear the Lord your God, you shall serve him and hold fast to him, and by his name you shall swear. He is your praise, he is your God, who has done for you these great and terrifying things that your eyes have seen. Your fathers went down to Egypt seventy persons, and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven.

Psalm 131 Read Aloud

SPEAKER_00 3:18

Psalm one thirty one. O Lord, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high. I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me, but I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me. O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore.

The Covenant Renewed In The Ark

SPEAKER_01 3:47

Deuteronomy ten is just a great chapter, Tyler, where it talks about, of course, God giving the Ten Commandments on two tablets yet again, because we know what happened last time with Moses coming down from the mountain, stumbling upon Israel and the golden calf, and breaking the two tablets of stone that God had given him. And so they go again. This is sort of round two, and he gives him instructions to place the tablets in the Ark of the Covenant. Now, the tablets represented a lot of things, but I would say first and foremost, they represented the covenant that God made with Israel. It's one of the reasons why they were placed in the ark under the mercy seat, underneath the cherubim, the two, the two cherubim with the the wings that were sort of pointing towards one another at the top of the lid of the ark. Uh, and they carried that to and fro whenever the cloud would lift up, as it talks about often in Numbers in Leviticus, that they would pick up camp and they would follow the cloud until it settled and they would sit back down. Uh, and the whole idea was that the the tablet and the covenants that are represented with those tablets are being protected, preserved in the ark of the covenant that was held in the Holy of Holies. And so just a very important chapter that we see here in Deuteronomy 10. And I love how it ends in verses 12 through 22, which talks about the circumcision of the heart. And so it's just another plea, it's another reminder of their hardness of heart, or at least the the generation before them, their hardness of heart that banned them from the promised land that God swore to their fathers, it banned them, and they fell in the wilderness, it says their bodies fell in the wilderness. So verse 12 says, And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? But to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord, which I am commanding you today for your good. Now, this made me think of our definition of fear of the Lord that we talked about on Sunday in connection to Proverbs and the fear of the Lord being the beginning of wisdom, talks about how the fear of the Lord is to rightly understand

Circumcision Of Heart Versus Stubbornness

SPEAKER_01 6:06

who God is and his character, and then rightly respond in service, worship, obedience, trust, and reverence. And so we see some of that right here in verse 12. What does the Lord require of you but to fear the Lord, to walk in his ways, to do what God has commanded, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord, which I am commanding you today for your good. So there's a sense of you need to recognize who God is, which is what even later on it talks about. Verse 17, for the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God who is not partial and takes no bribe. You need to recognize who God is and respond appropriately with worship, with trust, with service, with obedience, through ultimately, kind of summarized in the fear of the Lord. So they needed a different kind of circumcision than the males of Israel had already experienced. They experienced circumcision, the sign of the Abrahamic covenant on the eighth day, all of the male children in the nation of Israel. But God says, you know, you needed another kind of circumcision, you needed a circumcision of the heart, you needed a removal of something that could lead you to stubbornness and rebellion and a rejection of God as the great and awesome God, as it says here. So they needed to grow in the fear of the Lord, and so do we. I mean, we need these words today, just as much as they needed these words thousands of years ago. Even in verse 16, circumcise, therefore, the foreskin of your heart and be no longer stubborn. So that's the connection. The circumcision is against, contra stubbornness. Now we want we want soft hearts that fear the Lord, that recognize who he is, and respond appropriately in worship and service and ultimately uh in obedience to him. So just a great chapter, a lot going on here. Some reiterations of the covenant. God re-establishes the Ten Commandments on the two tablets, he places them in the Ark of the Covenant through his servant Moses, and uh basically everything that kind of went wrong is we're going back, we're redoing it. It's kind of uh just a reset. And all of this is again in preparation to entering into the promised land. So God's reminding them of their covenant, he's reminding them of who he is, he's saying what they are to do, to fear the Lord, how they are to respond, uh, and what kind of condition that he wants of their hearts. He wants soft hearts, he wants them to love him, to fulfill the great command, even bound up in that, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. So such a great, just encouraging chapter, and just a lot of truths, again, that we need today, just as much as they did then.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

And what a great reminder, PJ, for like for God's people then, the people of Israel and us today, uh, to not insist on our own way, not to insist on what we would prefer, the terms and conditions that we would uh find most comfortable for us. But no, we're gonna do it the Lord's way. We're gonna do it no matter where we are, where we go, what season it is, what time of day it is, what kind of circumstances surround us, uh, we're going to insist that we're gonna submit to God and we're gonna follow his lead, not out of external compliance, not out of just we get because we do. No, we want to uh we want to love the Lord and worship him in a way that would be pleasing to him with our whole selves. So that's a great encouragement

Humility And Hope In Psalm 131

SPEAKER_00 9:46

to me. And and that's that's what we see from David today. We see King David uh in Psalm 131 talking about the attitude of his own heart. His heart is not lifted up, his eyes are not raised too high. He's not a proud man before the Lord. He is seeking to be humble, he is standing in before a marvelous and wonderful and amazing God and recognizing his place before him. And uh the the way that we can approach God is sometimes uh as we talk about at Compass Bible Church, God is not our heavenly uh vending machine. We don't just put a quarter in and out comes blessings. We want to be uh in line with what God would have us do, how he would have us serve him and love others and carry out the uh the one-nothers in our local body and in the church uh that we have here uh in South Valley, but also in our community. And uh we have references here to the attitude of David's heart before the Lord. He's he's likening himself to a child that has been weaned, uh, that is um not uh desperate or or seeking the the comfort and the the um the the milk of of the of a nursing mother. Uh that has been that season is over and and the child is is content. The child is can stand next to mother and and be uh hungry and be okay. And that that's a a place that we can even make connections to the things that would draw us to be worried or anxious. What are those things? Uh there's there can be a long list of things depending on the season that we live in, many concerns in our world today. There's no lack of them, but we do stand before a Lord who is amazing, who is marvelous. Uh, we can say that with confidence. He is too great. We could how can we understand a God like the God that is described in the in the word, in the Bible? We we can't imagine one even if we dreamed of it. And David here is calling and and pleading with Israel, hope in the Lord. Don't worry, don't fret, don't stir about, don't, don't be thrashing around looking for where your next meal is going to come from. Here is the God, here is a God that has been faithful from from eternity, past in the present, and as we see in verse three, from this time forth and forevermore, hope in the Lord.

The Weaned Child And A Quiet Soul

SPEAKER_01 12:20

Yeah, I love the analogy here in verse two of the weaned child with its mother, because he's comparing his own soul, the status, the condition of his soul to that of a weaned child, which at first glance is a little bit strange. You think, well, what's the what's the parallel there? But when you think about a weaned child, part of that is they have received the nutrients, the growth, the strength, um, the physical maturity to not need that from their mother in in the same way that they did when they were younger. So there's that sense of stability. And I think that's even kind of what we're talking about here in verse two. My like a weaned child is my soul within me. I have calmed and quieted my soul. Now, how does he do that? Well, I think most especially uh with the word, because the word is often referred to um as something that also includes a spiritual kind of milk, spiritual truth that we feast on, that we grow up and not away from, but we are strengthened by. And uh there is the sense of the scriptures talking about milk and meat and how we are to navigate those things. But he's using this analogy here again in verse two like a weaned child with his mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me. So strangely enough, that's something that we should want, right? We want our souls uh to have that sense of quiet, that sense of calm that comes from uh ultimately that that early, those early days of being connected, that those early days of receiving the exact nutrients that we need from God's word. And again, it's not that we that we ever stop that. We continue to feast on God's word uh daily, but it's just there's something that's been produced in us. There's a stage that we reach of maturity and steadiness and calmness that comes from just meditating on uh and feasting on the word of God. So that's something that we should desire, something that we should work towards. And again, that all kind of connects back to Deuteronomy 10. It connects back to Proverbs chapter 1. It's the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is both the beginning of wisdom, but it's also, I would say, even sort of the entry point into our life of worship. We are to fear the Lord, rightly understand his character, who he is, and respond appropriately with reverence, with trust, with worship. And we want to see that uh in our lives. We want to see that in our church, and we want to be like a wean child, right? Where our soul within us is calmed and quieted by the truths of God's word.

Closing Encouragement And Next Steps

SPEAKER_01 14:50

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.