The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 4: The Flood (2023)

Episode Date: January 4, 2023

Today we read Genesis 7-9 and Psalm 1 and Fr. Mike reflects on the covenant God makes with Noah, and how the family of Noah becomes broken. Today's readings contain adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised. 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, I'm 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 four, so let's get started. We are reading today from Genesis chapter 7 and chapter 9, as well as diving back into the Psalms, but all the way back to the beginning. We're going to be reading Psalm 1. So to get your Bibles queued

up, Genesis chapter 7, 8, and 9, and Psalm 1. A couple reminders, the Bible translation that I'm using is the Great Adventure Bible from Ascension. It's the RSVCE, the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition. If you want to read along as well as listen along, you can download your Catholic Bible in a Year reading plan by going to ascensionpress.com slash Bible in a Year. Go to the website ascensionpress.com slash Bible in a Year. You can also subscribe in your podcast app, and we will keep showing up every morning for you. And then lastly, if you want to

sign up for our email list, you can do that by texting the word Catholic Bible to 33777. You probably have that memorized by now after these four days. Catholic Bible to 33777. Let's get started. Genesis 7 and 9. Then the Lord said to Noah, go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation. Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and its mate, and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and its mate, and seven pairs of the birds of the air also, male and female, to keep their kind alive upon the face of all the earth. For in seven days I will send rain upon the earth, forty days and forty nights, and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground. Verse 2. with him went into the ark to escape the waters of the flood, of clean animals, and of animals that are not clean, and of birds, and of everything that creeps on the ground. Two and two, male and

female, went into the ark with Noah, as God had commanded Noah. And after seven days the waters of the flood came upon the earth. In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened, and rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights. On the very same day Noah and his sons, Shem and Ham and Japheth, and Noah's wife, and the three wives of his sons with them entered the ark, and they and every beast according to its kind, and all the cattle according to their kinds, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth according to its kind, and every bird according to its

kind, every bird of every sort. They went into the ark with Noah, two and two of all flesh, in which there was the breath of life. And they that entered, male and female of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him, and the Lord shut him in. The flood continued forty days upon the earth, and the waters increased and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. The waters prevailed and increased greatly upon the earth, and the ark floated on the

face of the waters, and the waters prevailed so mightily upon the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered. The waters prevailed upon the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep. And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, birds, cattle, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm upon the earth, and every man, everything on the dry land in whose nostril was the breath of life, died. He blotted out every living thing that was upon the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the air, they were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those that were with him in the ark. And the waters prevailed upon the earth a hundred and fifty days.

But God remembered Noah, and all the beasts and all the cattle that were with him in the ark. When God made a wind blow over the earth and the waters subsided, the fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed. The rains from the heavens was restrained, and the waters receded from the earth continually. At the end of 150 days, the waters had abated, and in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. And the waters continued to abate until the tenth month. In the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen. At the end of forty days Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made, and sent forth a raven.

And it went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth. Then he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground. But the dove found no place to set her foot, and she returned to him to the ark, for the waters were still on the face of the whole earth. So he put forth his hand and took her, and brought her into the ark with him. He waited another seven days, and again he sent forth the dove out took her and brought her into the ark with him. He waited another seven days. And again, he sent forth the dove out of the ark. And the dove came back to him in the evening. And behold, in her mouth was a freshly plucked olive leaf.

So no one knew that the waters had subsided from the earth. And he waited another seven days and sent forth the dove. And she did not return to him anymore. In the 601st year, in the first month, the first day of the dove, and she did not return to him anymore. In the 601st year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried from off the earth and Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked and behold, the face of the ground was dry. In the second month, on the 27th day of the month, the earth was dry. Then God said to Noah, go forth from the ark, you and your wife and your sons and your sons' wives

with you. Bring forth with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh, birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, that they may breed abundantly on the earth and be fruitful and multiply upon the earth. And Noah went forth and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him. And every beast, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that moves upon the earth went forth by families out of the ark. Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took every clean animal and of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And when the Lord smelled the pleasing odor, the Lord said in his heart, I will never again curse the ground because of man. For the

imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth, neither will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease. And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the air, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you.

And as I gave you green plants, I give you everything. Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. For your lifeblood, I will surely require a reckoning. Of every beast, I will require it. And of man, and of every man's brother, I will require the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed. For God made man in his own image. And you, be fruitful and multiply, bring forth abundantly on the earth and multiply in it. Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the

birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. I establish my covenant with you that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth. And God said, this is the sign of the covenant, which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you for all future generations. I set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth, and the bow is seen in the clouds,

I will remember my covenant which is between me and you, and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will look upon it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth. God said to Noah, this is the sign of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth. The sons of Noah who went forth from the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham was the father of Canaan. These three were the sons of Noah.

And from these, the whole earth was peopled. Noah was the first tiller of Canaan. These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the whole earth was peopled. Noah was the first tiller of the soil. He planted a vineyard, and he drank of the wine, and became drunk, and lay uncovered in his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and he told his two brothers outside. Then Shem and Japheth took a garment,

laid it upon both their shoulders, and walked backward, and covered the nakedness of garment, laid it upon both their shoulders, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned away, and they did not see their father's nakedness. When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, he said, Cursed be Canaan! A slave of slaves shall he be to his brothers. He also said, Blessed by the Lord my God be Shem, and let Canaan be his slave. God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan be his slave. After the flood, Noah lived 350 years. All the days of Noah were 950 years, and he died.

Psalm 1, the two ways. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. Father in heaven, we thank you so much for your word and we thank you for revealing your love for us, your faithfulness to us, that your love is unstoppable and unconditional. And we give you

praise for revealing how you have used even the destructive power of water to renew the face of the earth. Lord God, all of your gifts, all of creation can be used for good. They can be used for ill. They can bring forth life and they can bring forth death. But you are good. You are the giver of life. And all life lies in your hand. All life lies in your power. And so we place our lives in your hands and we place our lives under your

dominion and authority this day. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. In the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen. Gosh, okay. So we have the story of Noah. We had last yesterday had heard about how Noah had made the ark and he did all that God had commanded him. And that was one of the refrains. That's so good. We know that Noah was a righteous man. It says again and again in scripture, Noah was righteous. He found favor in the eyes of the Lord. And as everything that God had asked him to do, he did. Noah did all this and he did all that God had commanded him. And then there was the floodwaters that destroyed the earth and destroyed all those who were not in the ark. That's a story that's probably one of the most well-known stories in the entire Bible.

And they have the bow, the rainbow in the air. And there's something really powerful about that rainbow, the archer's bow, that is not gonna be used for war, not gonna be used for destruction or death, but God is setting down his bow and saying that I will no longer, will never ever again destroy the earth by a flood. And so here's, God's making peace by making a covenant with Noah and his family.

It's just remarkable. There's also this, this notion, a couple of things change after this, right? There's a couple of things that are, that are, God makes incredibly clear. The first thing is the Lord smelled the offering that Noah made. He said, I'll never again curse the ground because of man. For the imagination of man's heart is evil from its youth. Neither will I ever again destroy a living creature as I've done. And so you have the sacrifice of Noah and the response of God is like, yeah, I lay down my bow, right? But also you have the next chapter nine, beginning of chapter nine,

where you have God saying that two things. One is you can eat of the animals. Now there is a, there's an element where there was not necessarily the commandment to eat or the permission granted to eat of animals before the flood, but then God gives permission. And it also gives a prohibition against murder. Now, obviously murder had already been proscribed. It had been prohibited. It had been spoken against, right? murder. Now, obviously, murder had already been proscribed. It had been prohibited. It had been spoken against, right? At some point, well, sorry, I say obviously. It's not in the text that God has prohibited murder. I think that would just be one of those obvious things, but who knows? Maybe I'm incorrect, but this is where God speaks

in chapter nine, and he says, whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image. And so there's this first clear prohibition, I guess you'd say, against murder. And the covenant between God and mankind is interwoven with reminders of God's gift of human life and man's murderous violence. That's a quote from the Catechism, paragraph 2260. I want to say that again. It says, the covenant between God and man is interwoven

with reminders of God's gift of human life. That is God's gift of human life. That God made man, he says this, whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image. That's a gift to us as human beings to be made in God's image and likeness. That's God's

gift of human life and also man's murderous violence. That one of the things we recognize is that the story of Noah points out the fact that human beings in our hearts are broken. We heard it in chapter three of Genesis, that story of the fall. We saw it in chapter four with Cain and Abel. Then we see it now as we continue in the story of the brokenness of the human heart, that actually the thoughts of the human heart are, as scripture says, are murderous. And so what we need to do is we need to bring those thoughts. We need to bring those desires of the human heart under God's dominion, under his rule. And so God prohibits, right?

Prescribes murder and says, if you shed the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed. But also says that you can eat of the animals, the flesh of animals. And it's the interesting thing the catechism says about that. In paragraph 2416 and 2417, it says that animals are God's creatures and he surrounds them with his providential care. By their mere existence, they bless him and give him glory. Thus men owe animals kindness. That's an important thing to note. 2417 says God entrusted animals to the stewardship to those whom he created in his own image. That's us, human beings. Hence, it is legitimate to use animals for food and clothing. They also may be domesticated to help man in his work and his leisure. Also, medical and scientific experimentation

on animals is morally acceptable if it remains within reasonable limits and contributes to caring for or saving human lives. But it is contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly or to expend extravagantly on animals when human beings could be helped. But there's this notion, right, where God has made a distinction here that animals may be killed and eaten. Human beings may never, innocent lives may never be taken. And that's a commandment given. Why? Because our hearts are broken. And there's almost maybe nothing that more clearly reveals the brokenness of the human heart

than the story immediately following the covenant with Noah. Maybe if you've never heard this story, you've heard the story of the animals and heard the story of the ark, you've heard the story of the flood and the dove, but maybe you never heard the story of his sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Because you have this story where Noah planted a vineyard and drank the wine, became drunk, lay uncovered in his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, told his two brothers outside. Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it upon their shoulders, walked backwards. They did not see the nakedness of their father. And you say, like, wait, how is Ham cursed now? And how is Canaan cursed because he saw his father's nakedness? Well, it is believed by many scripture scholars that seeing their father's nakedness is an

idiomatic expression for essentially laying with their father's mother, or sorry, their father's nakedness is an idiomatic expression for essentially laying with their father's mother, or sorry, their father's wife. Essentially having sex with his mom or his father's wife. That would not simply be typically in this kind of context, an act of lust, but actually an act of trying to dominate his own father, trying to humiliate his own father and emasculate his own father. And so Shem and Japheth did not do that. They honored their father. And so you have Ham being the father of Canaan and Canaan being the enemy of the people of Israel. And so you have this beginning of this, once again, the break of families. And this

is one of the things we're going to find again and again, as we continue to move through scripture these days ahead, is that when we follow the family, because pretty soon we're going to leave Noah, not yet quite, but we're going to leave Noah. We're going to be introduced to Abraham pretty quickly, or Abram and his wife Sarai pretty quickly. What we're going to find when we follow families is families are consistently broken. And families might not be as broken as this thing that Ham had done with his father's wife, but definitely broken in so many ways. Once again, the dignity that we have

as human beings, Mendeca's image and likeness, only seems to accent the murderous intent of our hearts, our willingness to do evil at times. And so what do we do? We say, okay, God, I place myself under your dominion. I place myself under your Lordship and I place myself under your grace because I know you've called me to heights. You've, you've, you've maybe in your image and likeness and yet in my heart, I'm broken. And so I need your grace, and I ask for your grace. I beg for your grace, and I place myself under the dominion of your grace.

You guys, we're going to continue our journey through the Bible. This is the Catholic Bible in a Year podcast. If you're interested in getting daily updates, you can subscribe to this podcast, in which case it'll pop up every single day as a podcast for you to listen to. If you'd like to have daily updates or regular updates and be on our list, you can text the word Catholic Bible to the number 33777 and you will get all the updates you can handle, my friend. It'll be phenomenal. I can't believe we're already starting this. This is our journey together, and I'm praying for you. Please pray for each other and pray for me. God bless you. My name is Father Mike.