The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 33: Locusts, Darkness, and Death of the Firstborn (2024)

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

In today's reading from Exodus 10-11, Fr. Mike explains how the ten plagues reveal that God is far greater than the Egyptian gods. We also discover more about how God wants to be worshipped through Leviticus 8 and Psalm 50. 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. This is day 33. Let's keep on moving right along. Day 33, we're reading from Exodus chapter 10 and chapter 11, as well as Leviticus

chapter 8, and we're praying through Psalm 50. As always, I'm reading from the Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition. I'm using Great Adventure Bible from Ascension. If you want to be able to follow along, you can download your own Bible in a Year reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com. If you have not yet subscribed, go ahead and click that, smash that subscribe button in your podcast app. You'll get daily updates at the crack of midnight or whenever we send those out. Once again, today we're reading from Exodus chapter 10 and 11, Leviticus chapter 8, and Psalm 50. from Exodus chapter 10 and 11, Leviticus chapter 8, and Psalm 50. Exodus chapter 10, the eighth plague, locusts.

Then the Lord said to Moses, go into Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his servants, that I may show these signs of mine among them, and that you may tell in the hearing of your son and of your son's son how I made sport of the Egyptians, and what signs I have done among them, that you may know that I am the Lord. So Moses and Aaron went in to Pharaoh and said to him, Thus says the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me? Let my people go, that they may serve me. For if you refuse to let my people go, behold, tomorrow I will bring locusts

into your country, and they shall cover the face of the land, so that no one can see the land. And they shall eat what is left to you after the hail, and they shall eat every tree of yours which grows in the field, and they shall fill your houses, and the houses of all your servants, and of all the Egyptians, as neither your fathers nor your grandfathers have seen, from the day they came on earth to this day. Then he turned and went out from Pharaoh. And Pharaoh's servants said to him, How long shall this man be a snare to us? Let the men go that they may serve the Lord their God. Do you not yet understand that Egypt is ruined? So Moses and Aaron were brought back to Pharaoh,

and he said to them, Go, serve the Lord your God. But who are to go? And Moses said, We will go with our young and our old. We will go with our sons and daughters and with our flocks and herds, for we must hold a feast to the Lord. And he said to them, The Lord be with you if I ever let you and your little ones go.

Look, you have some evil purpose in mind. No, go, the men among you, and serve the Lord, for that is what you desire. And they were driven out from Pharaoh's presence. Then the Lord said to Moses, Stretch out your hand over the land of Egypt for the locusts, that they may come upon the land of Egypt, and eat every plant in the land, all that the hail has left. So Moses stretched forth his rod over the land of Egypt and eat every plant in the land, all that the hail has left. So Moses stretched forth his rod over the land of Egypt,

and the Lord brought an east wind upon the land all that day and all that night. And when it was morning, the east wind had brought the locusts. And the locusts came up over all the land of Egypt and settled on the whole country of Egypt, such a dense swarm of locusts as had never been seen before, nor ever shall be again. For they covered the face of the whole land so that the land was darkened. And they ate all the plants in the land and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left. Not a green thing remained, neither tree nor plant of the field through all the land of Egypt. And Pharaoh called Moses and Aaron in haste and said, I have sinned against

the Lord your God and against you. Now therefore forgive my sin, I beg you, only this once, and entreat the Lord your God only to remove this death from me. So he went out from Pharaoh and entreated the Lord. And the Lord turned a very strong west wind, which lifted the locusts and drove them into the Red Sea. Not a single locust was left in all the country of Egypt. But the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he did not let the children of Israel go. The Ninth Plague. Darkness. Then the Lord said to Moses, Stretch out your hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, a darkness to be felt. So Moses stretched out his hand toward heaven, and there was thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days. They did not see one another, nor did any rise from his place for three

days. But all the sons of Israel had light where they dwelt. Then Pharaoh called Moses and said, Go, serve the Lord. Your children also may go with you. Only let your flocks and your herds remain behind. But Moses said, You must also let us have sacrifices and burnt offerings that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God. Our cattle also must go with us. Not a hoof shall be left behind, for we must take of them to serve the Lord our God, and we do not know with what we must serve the Lord until we arrive there. But the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he would not let them go. Then Pharaoh said to him, Get away from me, take heed to yourself, never see my face again, for in the day you see my face, you shall die. Moses said, As you say, I will not see your face again.

Chapter 11 Warning of the Final Plague The Lord said to Moses, Yet one plague more I will bring upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt. Afterwards he will let you go from here. When he lets you go, he will drive you away completely. Speak now in the hearing of the people that they ask every man of his neighbor and every woman of her neighbor jewelry of silver and of gold. And the Lord gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians. Moreover, the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh's servants and in the sight of the people. And Moses said, Thus says the Lord, cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there never has been nor ever shall be again.

But against any of the sons of Israel, either man or beast, not a dog shall growl, that you may know that the Lord makes a distinction between the Egyptians and Israel. And all these your servants shall come down to me and bow down to me, saying, Get you out, and all the people who follow you. get you out and all the people who follow you. And after that, I will go out. And he went out from Pharaoh in hot anger. Then the Lord said to Moses, Pharaoh will not listen to you, that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt. Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh and the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart and he did not let the sons of Israel go out of his land. The book of Leviticus chapter 8. The rites of ordination.

The Lord said to Moses, Take Aaron and his sons with him, and the garments, and the anointing oil, and the bowl of the sin offering, and the two rams, and the basket of unleavened bread, and assemble all the congregation at the door of the tent of meeting. And Moses did as the Lord commanded him. And the congregation was assembled at the door of the tent of meeting. And Moses said to the congregation, This is the thing which the Lord has commanded to be done. And Moses brought Aaron and his sons, and washed them with water. And he put on them the coat coat and girded him with the sash and clothed him with the robe and put the ephod upon him and girded him with the skillfully woven band of the ephod,

binding it to him therewith. And he placed the breastpiece on him. And in the breastpiece he put the urim and the thumim. And he set the turban upon his head. And on the turban in front he set the golden plate, the holy crown, as the Lord commanded Moses. Then Moses took the anointing oil and anointed the tabernacle and all that was in it and consecrated them. And he sprinkled some of it on the altar seven times and anointed the altar and all its utensils and the laver and its base

to consecrate them. And he poured some of the anointing oil on Aaron's head and anointed him to consecrate him. And Moses brought Aaron's sons and clothed them with coats and girded them with sashes and bound caps on them as the Lord commanded Moses. Then he brought the bull of the sin offering and Aaron and his sons laid their hands upon the head of the bull of the sin offering. And Moses killed it and took the blood, and with his finger put it on the horns of the altar round about, and purified the altar, and poured out the blood at the base of the altar, and consecrated it to make atonement for it. And he took all the fat that was on the entrails, and the appendage of the liver, and the two kidneys with their fat, and Moses burned them on the altar. But the bull and its skin and its flesh and its dung he burned with fire outside the camp, as the Lord commanded Moses. Then he presented the

ram of the burnt offering, and Aaron and his sons laid their hands on the head of the ram, and Moses killed it and threw the blood upon the altar round about. And when the ram was cut into pieces, Moses burned the head and the pieces and the fat. And when the entrails and the legs were washed with water, Moses burned the whole ram on the altar as a burnt offering, a pleasing odor, an offering by fire to the Lord, as the Lord commanded Moses. Then he presented the other ram, the ram of ordination. And Aaron and his sons laid their hands on the head of the ram. And Moses killed it, and took some of its blood, and put it on the tip of Aaron's right ear, and on the thumb of his right hand, and on the great toe of his right foot.

And Aaron's sons were brought. And Moses put some of the blood on the tips of their right ears, and on the thumbs of their right hands, and on the great toes of their right feet. And Moses threw the blood upon the altar round about. Then he took the fat and the fat tail and all the fat that was on the entrails and the appendage of the liver and the two kidneys with their fat and the right thigh. And out of the basket of unleavened bread, which was before the Lord, he took one unleavened cake and one cake of bread with oil and one wafer and

placed them on the fat and on the right thigh. And he put all these in the hands of Aaron and in the hands of his sons, and waved them as a wave offering before the Lord. Then Moses took them from their hands and burned them on the altar with the burnt offering as an ordination offering, a pleasing odor, an offering by fire to the Lord. And Moses took the breast and waved it for a wave offering before the Lord. It was Moses's portion of the ram ordination as the Lord commanded Moses. Then Moses took some of the anointing oil and of the blood which was on the altar and sprinkled it upon Aaron and his garments and also upon his sons and his son's garments. So he consecrated Aaron and his garments

and his sons and his son's garments with him. And Moses said to Aaron and his garments, and his sons, and his sons' garments with him. And Moses said to Aaron and his sons, Boil the flesh at the door of the tent of meeting, and there eat it, and the bread that is in the basket of ordination offerings, as I commanded, saying, Aaron and his sons shall eat it. And what remains of the flesh and the bread you shall burn with fire. And you shall not sons did all the things and night for seven days, performing what the Lord has charged, lest you die, for so I am commanded. And Aaron and his sons did all the things which the Lord commanded by Moses. Psalm 50. The Acceptable Sacrifice. A Psalm of Asaph. The Mighty One, God the Lord, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its A Psalm of Asaph about him a mighty tempest. He calls to the heavens above and to the earth that he may judge

his people. Gather to me my faithful ones who made a covenant with me by sacrifice. The heavens declare his righteousness for God himself is the judge. Hear, O my people, and I will speak. O Israel, I will testify against you. I am God, your God. I do not reprove you, your God. and all that moves in the field is mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and all that is in it is mine. Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving and pay your vows to the Most High and call upon me in the day of trouble.

I will deliver you and you shall glorify me. But to the wicked God says, What right have you to recite my statutes, or take my covenant on your lips? For you hate discipline, and you cast my words behind you. If you see a thief, you are a friend of his, and you keep company with adulterers. You give your mouth free reign for evil, and your tongue frames deceit. You sit and speak against your brother and slander your own mother's son. These things you have done, and I have been silent. You thought that I was one like yourself, but now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you. Mark this then, you who forget God, lest I tear and there be none

to deliver. He who brings thanksgiving as his sacrifice honors me. To him who orders his way aright, I will show the salvation of God. Father in heaven, we thank you. We give you praise and glory. You reveal that not only do you love us, but you continually reveal your heart to us. You continually fight for us. Again, this is this theme, Father, that you continually show to our hearts is that we are made for you and you alone.

And yet our hearts continually make idols and we can make idols out of anything around us. And yet, Lord God, you free us from idols. And you free us for true worship. Help our hearts be free, truly free. That we do not turn to idols. That we do not turn to false worship. But that we have hearts that have the kind of interior freedom where we can offer you the worship that you ask for.

We make this prayer in the mighty name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Okay, so there is so much to say about these chapters. I want to speak two quick notes on Exodus chapters 10 and 11 as one quick note on Leviticus chapter eight. So one of the things that I apologize, but I don't know if we made it absolutely clear

that what is up with all of the 10 plagues? Like what is going on? Sometimes we just think there are these random things. Okay. There's frogs. Now the Nile turns to blood here. There's locusts today. We have, um, that the sky goes dark for three days. What is that? Is this just God saying, Hey, I'm very powerful. It is. It is. He says that the people may know me, but it's also what God is doing. The Lord God is doing is he is demonstrating

that he is the Lord God above the false gods of the Egyptians, that every one of the 10 plagues is associated with one of the 10 false gods of Egypt. So as an example, when the river turns to blood, the Nile turns to blood, there was a God called Hapi, H-A-P-I, who was the Egyptian God of the Nile. And so here is the Lord God who shows his dominance over this false god, Hapi. We have the plague of frogs, and there is the Egyptian god Hekt, the Egyptian goddess of fertility and water and renewal,

and she's often depicted as a frog. Then there's the Egyptian plague of lice from the dust of the earth. Well, there was the god Geb, the Egyptian god of the earth, right? So all of these things are connected. For example, the swarm of flies was Kipri, the Egyptian god of creation Egyptian god of the earth, right? So all of these things are connected. For example, the swarm of flies was Kipri, the Egyptian god of creation, movement of the sun and rebirth.

And it's connected to, flies are connected to death instead of this rebirth. We even have, I think, maybe the most famous Egyptian god that we all know of probably, I don't know why, maybe because of movies and stuff like this, Ra, the sun god. And what do we have?

That second to last plague of darkness of the sun. And we have the Lord God demonstrating his power over light, over the sun. And so what this really is, is not merely the Lord God saying like, no, I'm real and I'm powerful and I'm going to inflict punishment on the people for not freeing my people from slavery. But also he's demonstrating his dominance over these false gods. And he's also getting into the hearts of his people, the people of Israel, because what has happened that Egypt has gotten into their hearts. They've been slaves for 400 years. They've been subsumed in so many

ways. Yes, they kept their own culture in some, some ways, but you have to probably acknowledge or just even assume that at some point, some of these Egyptian gods made it into their hearts. In fact, we don't need to have to assume. We know it happens because what's going to happen is as soon as Moses turns his back at Mount Sinai, goes up Mount Sinai, the people are going to make a false god for themselves. And they're going to worship the golden calf at the base of Mount Sinai. So a couple of quick things to note is that this is God who is, he's releasing the people from that possession of those false gods that have invaded the people of Israel's heart.

The second thing is this, and I think it's just so remarkable. Pharaoh says, okay, get out of my sight, take your men and your children. And Moses responds by saying, you must also let us have sacrifices and burnt offerings that we may sacrifice to the Lord, our God. So our cattle also must go with us. And this is in chapter 10. Not that term to serve means to worship. And so here is Moses who's saying, we don't know how God wants us to worship him. We don't know what he will want us to offer him. And so we are not going to offer him false worship.

We're not going to offer him the worship that we desire. We have to take everything because we are going to offer the Lord God the worship that he desires. And I remember when I was a kid and I read this and here's Moses saying to Pharaoh, no, no, we need to take all of our cattle and all of our everything. And I just thought that's Moses being sneaky. This is like Moses, you sly fox, you know, that kind of a thing. But Pope Benedict, he noted this.

He said, no, Moses is telling the truth to Pharaoh. The whole point of being released from slavery was to go worship God. And Moses is making it very clear that we don't know how he wants to be worshiped. So we're not going to just get our freedom and then give him whatever we want. We will receive freedom from his hand so that we can worship him how he wants. And this is so, so critically important when it comes to our lives, when it comes to the worship that we offer to the Lord God is when we approach him, we say, God, how do you want us to worship you? And as we know, at the last supper, Jesus, the word made flesh, the only son of the father,

the eternal God, he has said, do this, all of you, in memory of me, right? Take this, eat of it. This is my body. Take this, all of you, and drink of it. This is the blood of the new and eternal covenant, the new and eternal covenant. Do this in memory of me. This is how I want you to worship me. And that's so critical for us. We realize that from the beginning, we are all tempted to give God whatever worship we want. And from the beginning, God is making it very clear that the point of worship is not giving God what we want, but giving God what he asks for. When it comes to the book of Leviticus chapter eight, it is the rite of ordination. Now, just a quick note. I know we're already, you know, eight chapters into Leviticus,

already seven days into Leviticus, but it's important to get the context for this. Why is this called the book of Leviticus? Well, because this is the book that instructs the Levitical priesthood. Okay. Levitical, what do you mean? Well, the tribe of Levi. So Aaron is from the tribe of Levi and Aaron and his sons are singled out because before the issue of the golden calf, all of the people of Israel, they're all kingdom priests. Basically, if you are the father of your family, you are the priest of your family. We're going to know more about that later on. So in the day's upcoming, actually even tomorrow, we're going to have the final plague, the death of the firstborn,

but we have the Passover. And what happens? Well, the father is the one who leads that ritual. The father is the one who offers that as a sacrifice. The father acts as a priest, priest of his family. But with the issue with the golden calf and people were so quick to turn away from worship of the true God to worship however they wanted, that when Moses comes down Mount Sinai and he sees this, he says basically to arms, like, we're going to deal out vengeance. And it was men from the tribe of Levi that picked up swords and essentially dealt out justice, dealt out vengeance on those who were leading the false worship. And because of that, Moses says, you have ordained yourselves this day because the tribe of Levi put an end to that false worship. Now, Moses says, you have ordained yourselves this day because the tribe of Levi

put an end to that false worship. Now, Moses said that you've ordained yourselves today. And so from then on, only priests would only come from the tribe of Levi. You wouldn't discern that call. You wouldn't choose that call. It was, you were born into the tribe of Levi or you weren't. That's the only way. But they're also here in Leviticus chapter eight

is the right of ordination. So even though Moses says, you have ordained yourselves this day. Well, that was those people. In continuing generations, this is how the right of ordination would go for future sons of Aaron, future Levitical priests. So priests of the tribe of Levi

follow these Levitical rules. And that's where we have the priesthood. And it's so incredible because in the new covenant, gosh, you know, even all these sacrifices that we've read through from chapter one up now, you know, to chapter eight, these sacrifices of serial offerings, the burnt offerings, these all prefigure the great sacrifice of Jesus Christ. If you read the letter to the Hebrews in context with the book of Leviticus, it's so illuminating how God had been preparing his people from the beginning to be able to give him the worship that he truly, truly deserves. There's so much more to be said about

this, but we're out of time. There's the rest of the Bible that we've got in front of us. And today, the thing that we can focus on is this, is that God wants to free us from our idolatry. God wants to dominate those things that dominate us. He wants to give us the freedom so we can give him the worship that he deserves. So I have to ask myself, do I worship the God that I want? Do I give God what I want to give him? Or do I worship the God who reveals himself to me? And do I give him what he has asked for? You guys, we keep praying for each other,

keep praying with each other, because without that, I mean, I know it's day 33 and you guys are cruising right along. You know, they say to make a good habit, you go 30 days. So you guys have passed that hump and I'm just so proud of you. Please keep me in your prayers. I am keeping you in my prayers every single day. My name is Father Mike, and I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.