The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 209: God Comforts His People (2023)

Episode Date: July 28, 2023

Fr. Mike brings us into the book of Consolation as we continue through Isaiah, and learn about how God never fails to comfort his people, even in the worst of times. He also introduces us to the Prophet Ezekiel, as we read about God accompanying his people into exile, even after their unfaithfulness. Today's readings are Isaiah 39-40, Ezekiel 1, and Proverbs 11:29-31. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/bibleinayear. Please note: The Bible contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.

Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Bible in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's voice and live life through the lens of Scripture. The Bible in a Year podcast is brought to you by Ascension. Using the Great Adventure Bible timeline, we'll read all the way from Genesis to Revelation, discovering how the story of salvation unfolds and how we fit into that story today. It is day 209. We are, gosh, good job, you guys. Well done.

And we are reading Isaiah chapter 39 and 40. We are leaving the book of woe and we're heading into the book of consolation, which is awesome. We're also being introduced to another one of the major prophets, Ezekiel. We're just reading Ezekiel chapter one today. We're also reading Proverbs 11 verses 29 through 31. As always, the Bible translation that I am reading from is the revised standard version, second Catholic edition. I'm using the Great Adventure Bible from Ascension. If you want to download your own Bible in a Year reading plan, you can visit ascensionpress.com

slash Bible in a Year. You can also subscribe to this podcast to receive daily episodes and updates and all those kinds of things. Or you can just not subscribe and I'll keep on reminding you to do the thing you don't want to do. But be that as it may, it is day 209. We are reading Isaiah 39 and 40, Ezekiel chapter 1 in Proverbs chapter 11 verses 29 through 31. The book of the prophet Isaiah chapter 39. Envoys from Babylon welcomed. At that time, Merodach Baladon, the son of Baladon, king of Babylon, sent envoys with letters and a present to Hezekiah. For he heard that he had been sick and had recovered, and Hezekiah welcomed them. He showed them his treasure house, the silver, the gold, the spices, the precious oil, his whole armory, all that was found in his storehouses.

There was nothing in his house or in all his realm that Hezekiah did not show them. There was nothing in his house or in all his realm that Hezekiah did not show them. Then Isaiah the prophet came to King Hezekiah and said to him, What did these men say, and from where did they come to you? Hezekiah said, They have come to me from a far country, from Babylon. He said, What have they seen in your house? Hezekiah answered, They have seen all that is in my house. There is nothing in my storehouses that I did not show them. Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, Hear the word of the Lord of hosts. Behold, the days are

coming when all that is in your house and that which your fathers have stored up till this day shall be carried to Babylon. Nothing shall be left, says the Lord. And some of your sons who are born to you shall be taken away, and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon. Then said Hezekiah to Isaiah, The word of the Lord which we have spoken is good, for he thought, There will be peace and security in my days. Chapter 40. God Comforts His People. Comfort. Comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that her warfare is ended,

that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins. A voice cries, in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low. The uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. A voice says, Cry, and I say, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.

The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it. Surely the people is grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings. Lift up your voice high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings. Lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings. Lift it up, fear not. Say to the cities of Judah, Behold, your God. Behold, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him. Behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. He will feed his flock like a shepherd. He will him and his recompense before him. He will feed his flock

like a shepherd. He will gather the lambs in his arms. He will carry them in his bosom and gently lead those that are with young. Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance? Who has directed the spirit of the Lord or as his counselor has instructed him? Whom did he consult for his enlightenment and who taught him the path of justice and taught him knowledge and showed him the way of understanding? Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as the dust on the scales. Behold, he takes up the aisles like fine dust. Lebanon would not suffice for fuel, nor are its beasts enough for a burnt

offering. All the nations are as nothing before him. They are accounted by him as less than nothing, an emptiness. To whom then will you liken God, or what likeness compare with him? The idol? A workman casts it, and a goldsmith overlays it with gold and casts for it silver chains. He who is impoverished chooses for an offering wood that will rot. He seeks out a skillful craftsman to set up an image that will not move. Have you not known? Have you not heard? Had it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth, it is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in, who brings princes to naught,

who makes the rulers of the earth as nothing. Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth when he blows upon them and they wither and the tempest carries them off like stubble. To whom then will you compare me that I should be like him, says the Holy One? Lift up your eyes on high and see who created these. He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name, by the greatness of his might, and because he is strong in power, not one is missing. Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel,

my way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God? Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary. His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might, he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted. But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles.

They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. The Book of Ezekiel, Chapter 1, The Vision of the Four Living Creatures In the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I was among the exiles by the river Chabar, the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God. On the fifth day of the month, it was the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiakim, the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chabar, and the hand of the Lord was upon him there. As I looked, behold, a stormy wind came out of the north, and a great cloud, with brightness round about it, and fire flashing

forth continually, and in the midst of the fire, as it were, gleaming bronze. And from the midst of it came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance. They had the form of men, but each had four faces, and each of them had four wings. Their legs were straight, and the soles of their feet were like the sole of a calf's foot, and they sparkled like burnished bronze. Under their wings, on their four sides, they had human hands, and the four had their faces and their wings thus. Their wings touched one another. They went every one straight forward without turning as they went. As for the likeness of their faces, each had the face of a man in front,

the four had the face of a lion on the right side, the four had the face of an ox on the left side, and the four had the face of an eagle at the back. Such were their faces. And their wings were spread out above. Each creature had two wings, each of which touched the wing of another, while two covered their bodies. And each went straight forward, wherever the spirit would go, they went, without turning as they went. In the midst of the living creatures, there was something that looked like burning coals of fire, like torches moving back and forth among the living creatures.

And the fire was bright. And out of the fire went forth lightning. And the living creatures darted back and forth like a flash of lightning. Now, as I looked at the living creatures, I saw a wheel upon the earth beside each living creature, one for each of the four of them. As for the appearance of the wheels and their construction, their appearance was like the gleaming of a chrysolite, and the four had the same likeness, their construction being, as it were, a wheel within a wheel. When they went,

they went in any of their four directions without turning as they went. The four wheels had rims, and they had spokes, and their rims were full of eyes round about. And when the living creatures went, the wheels went beside them. And when the living creatures rose from the earth, the wheels rose. Wherever the spirit would go, they went and the wheels rose along with them. For the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. When those went, these went. And when those stood, these stood, and when those rose from the earth, the wheels rose along with them, for the spirit of the living creatures was

in the wheels. Over the heads of the living creatures there was a likeness of a firmament shining like crystal spread out above their heads, and under the firmament their wings were stretched out straight one toward another, and each creature had two wings covering its body. And when they went, I heard the sound of their wings like the sound of many waters, like the thunder of the Almighty, a sound of tumult, like the sound of a host. When they stood still, they let down their wings. And there came a voice from above the firmament over their heads. When they stood still, they let down their wings. The glory of the Lord. And above the firmament over their heads, there was the likeness of a throne in appearance

like sapphire, and seated above the likeness of the throne was a likeness, as it were, of a human form. And upward, from what had the appearance of his loins, I saw as it were gleaming bronze, like the appearance of fire enclosed round about. And downward, from what had the appearance of his loins, I saw as it were the appearance of a fire, and there was brightness round about him. Like the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud on the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about. Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. And when I saw it, I fell on my face, and I heard the voice of one speaking.

A reading from the book of Proverbs, chapter 11, verses 29 through 31. He who troubles his household will inherit wind, and the fool will be servant to the wise. The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, but lawlessness takes away lives. If the righteous is repaid on earth, how much more the wicked and the sinner. Father in heaven, we give you praise and thank you so much for your word. Thank you for speaking to us. Thank you for coming to us and being among us. And thank you not only for being with us in our good days, in our days of strength, our days of victory, our days where we know that we belong, that we are loved, but also, Lord

God, we thank you for being with us on those days where it is difficult to know if anyone notices. It's difficult to know if anyone knows us. It's difficult to know if anyone truly loves. You are the God who is so faithful that you love us when no one else does, and you see us when no one else sees, and you are with us when we are alone and no one else is with us. And so we thank you, and we give you praise because you do this. You love us solely out of the goodness of you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And so we're so

grateful, so thankful. We love you, God. Thank you for loving us. Receive our prayer and help us love you better in Jesus' name, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Okay, so gosh. Okay, we kind of had a little narrative break when it came to Isaiah, right, in chapters, you know, 38, 39, that whole thing, that whole thing, right, of revisiting the recognition of here's the Assyrians coming in, here's Hezekiah, here's Isaiah, this whole kind of rigmarole, if that's the right word, where Hezekiah hears the word of Ksenikarib through the Rabshakeh and presents himself before the Lord. And he has a great prayer in Isaiah chapter 38. And now here, the Lord has already delivered the people of Israel from Assyria and the Babylonians come visiting. And Hezekiah kind of unwisely, and when I say kind of unwisely, I'm just being nice. He unwisely shows all the storehouses and everything, the entire armory that he has,

everything he has, he shows to the storehouses and everything, the entire armory that he has, everything he has, he shows to the envoys from Babylon. And Isaiah even says, that's not a good thing. And remember, we pointed this out in 2 Chronicles and in 2 Kings, that when Isaiah said this to Hezekiah, basically, this is, the Babylonians are going to come and take everything, you know, from your descendants, that Hezekiah, who in his old age is becoming more and more, or he's becoming less and less the great man that he was. And gosh, it says this, then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, the word of the Lord, which you have spoken is good for he thought there will be peace and security in my days, basically

not caring about the days of those after him, only having concern for his own days. And yet the very next chapter, we go back to the prophet Isaiah and his declaration of this word of God. And that ushers in, as we talked about before, the book of consolation. So Isaiah is a book with 66 chapters, chapters one through 39, book of woe, even though in the midst of the woe, we had consolation.

40 to 66, we have the book of consolation. And so it begins with what? The word consolation, essentially. Comfort, woe, we had consolation. 40 to 66, we have the book of consolation. And so it begins with what? The word consolation, essentially. Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. And if you're familiar at all with the season of Advent, the season leading up to Christmas, you recognize that a lot of today's readings of chapter 40 are proclaimed during the season of Advent. And it's just remarkable because it just has that truth proclaimed

that a voice cries in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God and goes on to talk about this. And we recognize, wait, that sounds like something that John the Baptist might've said. And you'd be completely correct

because John the Baptist, knowing that the day of the Lord was gonna come in Christ Jesus, in the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, was preparing people for him by turning away from their sins and crying out, gosh, in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. And so this is all about that God will come and he will bring his justice and he will bring this era, this kingdom of peace.

He will bring this kingdom of justice and He will bring this kingdom of justice. And he will bring the kingdom of his own, his presence, his own presence, which is just phenomenal. He will feed them. He will care for them. He will carry the lambs in his arms. He will carry them in his bosom and gently lead those that are with young, which is powerful and so good. And there's so much to be said about chapter 40 of Isaiah. So if you can go back and

re-listen or go back and re-read, so incredible. At the end of chapter 40 of Isaiah, there is something that I just, man, it's always been one of my favorite scripture passages ever since maybe I was in junior high or high school when I first saw the movie Chariots of Fire. Chariots of Fire is a true story about a man named Eric Little, who was a Scottish man who ran the 400 meter dash. I think it was maybe 400 yards back then. I don't know, but he ran the 400. And he ran for Great Britain, of course. And he was also a devoted Christian. And one of the things that happened was the heats for the 100, he was ranked, I think, number one in the 100 meter dash at that time. But the heats for the 100 meter dash were on Sunday and he refused to race on a Sunday. He refused to race on the Lord's day as a committed Christian. And so they moved him to the 400 and

he, I don't want to give it away, but he wins the 400 meter dash. But at one point when he was supposed to be in the heats, instead, he was preaching in one of the churches in the area. And he, in the movie, at least he's quoting Isaiah chapter 40, where he says that God gives power to the faint and to him who has no might, he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary and young men shall fall exhausted. But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. It's so powerful. Eric Little went on to become a missionary, I believe in China, where he gave his life for the Lord as a martyr. And so we're just so grateful for the example of all of those martyrs who got their strength from the Lord Jesus, including those martyrs, those current modern day martyrs.

Even more people have given their lives for Jesus Christ in the last century than in all the other centuries combined, which is amazing. And Eric Little is one of those people. So that's Isaiah chapter 39 and 40. But we also got introduced to the book of Ezekiel. Little background on Ezekiel. Ezekiel was a priest, not only a prophet, right? He's a prophet, Ezekiel, but he was a priest.

He was of the household of Levi, right? Tribe of Levi, household of Aaron, he would imagine because he was a priest and he is taken into exile. In fact, remember there are three stages of exile. There's the first wave of exile that happens. And that is when Daniel is brought into exile. That happens way back, all the way back into 605 BC. And then roughly, gosh, seven years later, I'm bad with math, in 597 BC, that's the second wave of exile. And that's when Ezekiel went into exile in the Babylon.

And now Ezekiel says, he starts, he begins this book of the prophet Ezekiel saying in the 30th year, when he turned 30. Now think about this. He's been exiled. He's away from the temple. But being a priest of the Lord God, he would have begun his temple worship, temple service, I mean, at 30 years old. That's when he would have begun this. And instead, he's by this river Chadar and in Babylon, in the land of the Chaldeans. And we just recognize

that here is this man who had so much hope, right? He had so much promise. He had so much, this man who had so much hope, right? He had so much promise. He had so much, because he was raised, he lived under the time of Josiah, where he saw all this reform. You have the reinstitution of the priesthood. You have the reinstitution of true and proper worship happening in the temple.

And here is Ezekiel, who's been prepped for this his whole life. And then, bam, here comes the Babylonians and they take the people of Israel into exile in 605. And then here's Ezekiel and his wife are brought into exile in 597. And he's among the captives. And it's there, it's in this place that he sees something remarkable. And obviously we have the whole description of the four figures. And then above them, seated on the throne is someone who looks like he's containing fire itself. And the big takeaway I want to just offer is this.

Ezekiel was brought from Jerusalem, brought from the temple where the presence of God was. He's brought to a land that is foreign, where he's a captive, where he is not home, where God, in some ways you say, doesn't exist. God doesn't abide there, right? He abides in Jerusalem, although God is everywhere. And what does God reveal to Ezekiel? God reveals to Ezekiel that he has gone with his people into exile. And this is so incredible. This is so remarkable that God has not abandoned his people. Remember, this exile is because they have been unfaithful. This exile is for their remedy, right?

It's for their healing. It's for bringing their hearts back. And what is revealed in the very first words of first chapter, of course, of the book of Ezekiel is that as God's people are brought into exile, God himself allows himself to go into exile with them. And that is just, oh gosh, if that doesn't touch your heart, I just don't even know. It's incredible. One last note before we take a break for today is there's these four creatures, right? These four living creatures, and they have four faces and the face of a man, face of a lion, face of ox,

face of an eagle. And they're just really remarkable. We'll see this kind of image in other places. We see allusions to this in Daniel and Revelation and whatnot. But the church fathers have always interpreted that these faces have an allusion to the gospel writers. And so you have, historically, you have Matthew as the face of the man, and the face of the lion is Mark, and the face of the ox is have Matthew as the face of the man. And the face of the lion is Mark. The face of the ox is Luke. And the face of the eagle is John. And some of the ways we would interpret that is eagle because John is the eagle because he begins, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.

And so it starts really high and lofty, right? Like the eagle soaring. Luke is the ox because Luke is talking about the sacrifices and the sacrificial rites, that priestly nature of Jesus Christ's sacrifice of himself. Mark would be the lion because Mark makes a point of pointing out that Jesus is the lion from Judah and Matthew being the man because in Matthew's genealogy, he traces his genealogy all the way back to Abraham. And he goes and begins there with this whole unfolding of God's plan in the fullness of time to bring about Jesus who became man and dwelt among us. So we've just begun Ezekiel, which is a great thing because we have a long way to go. Ezekiel

is one of the longer books of the Bible and not as long as Isaiah, but it is 48 chapters long. And so we have a long time we're going to spend with the prophet Ezekiel, which is a great thing because we're going to team up Isaiah and Ezekiel. And then in a number of days, we're going to start the prophet Jeremiah, these three major prophets, and we get them all over the next couple of weeks, couple of days. So that's such a gift. It is also such a gift to be able to walk with you and be a part of this community. Thank you so much.

Please keep praying for each other. Please pray for me. I'm praying for you. My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.