July 16, 2026 - Deuteronomy 16 & Psalm 137

We read Deuteronomy 16 and Psalm 137, then connect God’s feasts, God’s justice, and Israel’s exile to the way we worship and live today. We also reflect on the Holy Spirit’s work in verbal plenary inspiration and ask for prayer as students and leaders press on through Ignite 2026. 

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 Bible Plan Setup

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to the Lamp and Light Bible 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 Sanmorn. Today is Thursday, July 16th, 2026.

Deuteronomy 16 Read Aloud

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Listen intently to God's written word. Deuteronomy 16. Observe the month of Abib and keep the Passover to the Lord your God, for in the month of Abid the Lord your God brought you out of Egypt by night. And you shall offer the Passover sacrifice to the Lord your God, from the flock or the herd, at the place that the Lord will choose, to make his name dwell there. You shall eat no leavened bread with it. Seven days you shall eat it with unleavened bread, the bread of affliction, for you came out of the land of Egypt in haste. Then all the days of your life you you may remember the day when you came out of the land of Egypt. No leaven shall be seen with you in all of your territory for seven days, nor shall any of the flesh that you sacrifice on the evening on the first day remain all night until morning. You may not offer the Passover sacrifice within any of your towns that the Lord your God is giving you, but at the place that the Lord your God will choose, to make his name dwell in it, there you shall offer the Passover sacrifice, in the evening at sunset, at the time you came out of Egypt, and you shall cook it and eat it at the place that the Lord your God will choose, and in the morning you shall turn and go to your tents. For six days you shall eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a solemn assembly to the Lord your God. You shall do no work on it. You shall count seven weeks, begin to count the seven weeks from the time the sickle is first put to the standing grain. Then you shall keep the feast of weeks to the Lord your God, with the tribute of a free will offering from your hand, which you shall give as the Lord your God blesses you, and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God, you and your son and your daughter, your male servant and your female servant, the Levite who is within your towns, the sojourner, their fatherless, and the widow who are among you, at the place that the Lord your God will choose, to make his name dwell there. You shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and you shall be careful to observe these statutes. You shall keep the feast of Booth seven days, when you have gathered in the produce from your threshing floor and your wine press. You shall rejoice in your feast, you and your son and your daughter, your male servant and your female servant, the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow who are within your towns. For seven days you shall keep the feast of the Lord your God at the place that the Lord will choose, because the Lord your God will bless you in all your produce and in all the work of your hands, so that you will be altogether joyful. Three times a year all your males shall appear before the Lord your God at the place that he will choose. At the feast of unleavened bread, at the feast of weeks, and at the feast of booze, they shall not appear before the Lord empty handed. Every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the Lord your God that he has given you. You shall appoint judges and officers in all your towns that the Lord your God is giving you, according to your tribes, and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment. You shall not pervert justice, you shall not show partiality, and you shall not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of the righteous. Justice and only justice you shall follow, that you may live and inherit the land that the Lord your God has given you. You shall not plant any tree as an asherah beside the altar of the Lord your God that you shall make, and you shall not set up a pillar which the Lord your God hates.

Psalm 137 Read Aloud

SPEAKER_00 3:19

Psalm 137. By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung our lyres, for there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill, let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy. Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites, the day of Jerusalem, how they said, Lay it bare, lay it bare, down to its foundations, O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed. Blessed shall he be who repays you with what you have done to us. Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock.

Ignite 2026 And Inspired Scripture

SPEAKER_01 4:22

Well, at the time of recording this, we are in night two of Ignite 2026 theme empowered, and we just wrapped up our second session. Now, for fun, since I preached the session, Tyler, why don't you tell us what the session was all about? Put you on the spot.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

PJ, your session, session two of Ignite 2026, was about the spirit's work in the scriptures, the verbal plenary inspiration, meaning I remembered. Nice, meaning the spirit spoke through the authors that God chose to write down the inspired word of God. So when you ask the question, who wrote the scriptures? Is it the author or is it the spirit? And we would say, Yes. So the great encouragement of the evening was the work of the spirit in the word of God and to be filled with the spirit would mean that we're filling our hearts and minds with God's very word, that the spirit's work. So a great encouragement for our students to dive into the scriptures, and as you put it, the blueprints of God's spirit are all over the scriptures, and it's his uh word that breathed out, and for us to to absorb them, to ingest them, to hide them in our hearts, it's God's word that leads us and guides us.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

Amen. And it's been an encouraging two days so far, an exhausting two days, uniquely for for you, Tyler. You're a little bit more in the trenches than I am, uh, along with some of our other South Valley servants. So please just be praying for endurance. You know, Holly O'Kelly got, I don't know what happened. She was she got nicked up, she was limping a little bit. She was limping. I think she might have been bleeding. I don't know. She was hurting. So pray for our leaders, pray for safety, just pray for just good time of discussion. Even right now, as we're recording this, small groups are happening and they're reflecting on the sermon together. So just be praying for the Lord just to do great things through this

Feasts And Justice In Deuteronomy

SPEAKER_01 6:26

week. Now, as we turn to Deuteronomy 16, now we're kind of in the section. If you remember the threefold kind of division of Deuteronomy, it starts with speeches of Moses. Now we're kind of in the central section, which is about the reiteration of the law that really kind of began with the reinstitution, I should say. Not that it ever went away, but the uh the new tablets of stone, uh, the Ten Commandments that are placed into the Ark of the Covenant, and this sort of um renewal, if you will, of the covenant that God made with that first generation that was faithless and died in the wilderness because of their disobedience. And now here we are in chapter 16, where those specific laws about some of the feast and the Passover and the feast of booths and the feast of weeks uh are reiterated. And even some of the themes of justice um being kind of in the forefront of this chapter, uh judges being appointed, officers, they want order, they want justice. Uh, they do not want partiality. God does not want, I should say, partiality. Verse 19 you shall not show partiality, you shall not accept a bribe. So we're not being swayed by monetary gain or sordid gain. Uh, it says, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of the righteous. So bribery and sordid gain undermine the pursuit of justice. And God says in verse 20, justice and only justice you shall follow, that you may live and inherit the land that the Lord your God is giving you. So, as a part of this covenant, as part of this nation that God is forming and making holy, setting apart, consecrating them for himself, he expects them to pursue and exemplify justice because that's a characteristic of God Himself. And by pursuing justice in their own sort of court systems, upholding the law that God has commanded, it demonstrates and exemplifies the character of God, both to themselves internally as a nation, and to other surrounding nations as well. So that's commanded, and so we're getting some reiteration of the laws here from Deuteronomy 16.

Psalm 137 And Longing For Home

SPEAKER_00 8:27

As we look to our psalm today, we have some imagery and some tells here of Israel in captivity, and we see Babylon referenced and the daughter of the Edomites and uh a people who's longing for their home, longing for Zion, longing for Jerusalem. And we are reminded of the the ways that we can be distant and be longing for the fellowship or the the longing of of God and God's people and God's uh God's land for the Israelites. They are looking back uh likely to their mistakes, to the ways that they have wandered and fallen away, and they are being uh forced and charged by their captors to sing a song, uh, the songs of Zion, the song of your homeland, and that would bring uh a bitterness, surely, and tears to their eyes that they are away from home, they are in captivity, and um they they are maybe even thinking, we've we've taken for granted uh what uh what we had, and uh the the verse six sticks out to me in the imagery here. Let the the tongue stick to the roof of my mouth if I don't remember you, if I don't remember you, Jerusalem, if I've not set my mind and my heart on you where God dwells, and that's the focus here. It's nothing nothing is special about Jerusalem unless God dwelled there, unless God promised his people that they would have a land in Canaan. So um a psalm that's maybe has a a somber taste, a somber sound to it as you reflect um what the the Israelites would be, where they would be and what they would be thinking of as they think about God um and their current position.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

Absolutely.

Prayer Requests And Closing

SPEAKER_01 10:15

So as you listen to this, I hope you just spend a few minutes, a few moments praying uh for these students, pray for the leaders, pray for great energy. We have got uh two more full days, Thursday and Friday, and then uh kind of a half day on Saturday. And so just pray for endurance, pray for faithfulness, and pray for the Lord to do far more than we can ever ask or imagine. 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.