The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Introduction to Conquest & Judges (with Jeff Cavins) (2024)

Episode Date: March 21, 2024

Congratulations on completing the Desert Wanderings period! Jeff Cavins joins Fr. Mike to introduce the fifth biblical period, Conquest and Judges. They discuss the trials the Israelites face as they enter the Promised Land. We learn that the book of Joshua and the book of Judges are characterized by Israel's unfaithfulness, destruction, and repentance. 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. Once again, today we are joined by Jeff Cavins, who's going to introduce the next time period. We've gone through a number of time periods already from the early world to the patriarchs,

to the desert wanderings, Exodus in Egypt. And now we're coming on to the next time period, which is conquest and judges. We're entering into this time period where Israel is about to cross the Jordan River and heading on in to the promised land. And whatever happens now is gonna be the content of the next number of days as we're going into Judges and the book of Joshua.

And that's what we have. So Jeff is joining us today as the expert, helping us to kind of get ourselves situated and having a context for these next number of days as we're going through this new time period. Welcome, Jeff, once again. Oh, thank you. It's good to join you. And yeah, we're going into a very, very exciting period.

Yeah, there's a lot that happens. Yeah, there's an amazing amount that happens. And this period is actually not that long. And it's made up of two books. It is Joshua and Judges. And for those of you that are following along in your Bible timeline chart, this is the green period. And it's green because it reminds us of going from the desert wanderings, which is tan, now into the lush, green land of promise, the land of Canaan. That's why it is green.

And yet there's going to be not just green means go, like in the sense of easy or in the sense of just kind of go up and take the land. There's going to be some struggle that is kind of really marks, I think, this time of conquest and judges. I mean, obviously, conquest would involve struggle. But this time of conquest and judges, I mean, obviously conquest would involve struggle, but this time period isn't clean. And it's one of those things, I think if anything, we take away from these first however many days we've been journeying through the Bible is that even though God is with his people, it's not always very clean. It's not that one of those situations where it's just, oh, God's with us, therefore the

road is smooth. It is oftentimes marked by a certain struggle and certain even catastrophe. Yeah, but what's interesting is that even today, people think that it should be nice and easy and clean because God is with us. But what we're going to find out here in this period, Father, is the fact that God is with them. There's also going to be trials in the period to see, will they really trust in the Lord? So let's kind of set the stage. We just went from the book of Numbers, and now we're moving into Joshua, the last period left off on the eastern side

of the Jordan River, looking westward across the Jordan. And you can see Jericho, and you can even see Jerusalem way up on the hill. And this is where they're going to be going into. The principal books are Joshua and Judges, and then in the midst of Judges, there's Ruth. So we have really two major sections here. We have the conquest of Canaan, and then we enter a very, very difficult period called the Judges, and we'll talk about that in a little bit. The main character is Joshua. Moses has died on Mount Nebo on the eastern side of the Jordan in modern-day Jordan, and Joshua is the one that's going to take them across in this first book, Joshua, and it's very dramatic. They're going to go across the Jordan River, and the waters are going to be rolled back all the way to a city called Adam,

and that's about eight miles upstream. Now, this is interesting because the waters, you know, the Canaanite god system, they're really worshiping Baal. And there's all kinds of derivatives of this. And the two principal gods are Ashtoreth and El. Ashtoreth and El get together. They have a baby god, ain't he cute? And his name is Baal. And Baal is over fertility. Baal is over the waters, over agriculture. And the very first thing that God is going to do in going into the land is he's going to move that water all the way upstream, and everybody in Jericho is going to see this. Now, they're going to go across, and the manna's going to cease. They're going to circumcise the young men who they didn't in the desert. Then they're going to take Jericho, and most people

have heard that story, and then they're going to divide and conquer. There's going to be a southern and a northern campaign in the book of Joshua, but they don't utterly take the land. They take the hill countries, and then the Canaanites have the lowlands. Now, if you look at warfare today, you'd say, yay, I mean, we've got the upper hand, we're up on the mountains. But that's not true because it's where the chariots are. That's what counts, and that's down below. And so they settle into the land, and you know what's really happening here, Father, is they've been in boot camp for a year at Mount Sinai in Numbers and Exodus, and it's

showtime. Now is the time to put your faith into practice. In fact, those were the last words in Deuteronomy from Moses in chapter 4 and chapter 6. He says basically that you have to live your life as though two things. One, there's only one God. Number two, you've got to teach your children. If you're going to go into this land where they sacrifice children, they want to intermarry, this is the way that you're going to be successful. So they go in, they possess the land, but they don't do what God commanded them to do. And so we have all kinds of interesting stories here. And as people are going to find out, this is the period where all of your questions

are going to come about, about why did this happen? Why did that happen? What about the innocent? And so that's the first part of our movement here. That's the conquest. And another interesting thing that happens here in the next few days is that all of the land will be divided up among tribes. So if you look at a map in the back of your Bible, you'll see a tribal allotment of land, both on the east and the west side of the Jordan. And there's something peculiar about it.

You won't see any land for Joseph. And you won't see any land for the Levites. You won't see any land for Joseph, and you won't see any land for the Levites. And the reason is because Joseph has two half-tribes, Ephraim and Manasseh. Those were his sons. And there is no tribal allotment for the Levites because they have 48 cities distributed throughout the land for them to minister from. So that's the book of Joshua. Then it comes to an end and then we're going to be going into Judges. Yeah. And then the Lord had said to the Levites,

he said that you won't have any land to inherit because I'm your inheritance. That the Lord himself is your inheritance. Now you mentioned just a second ago that journey through Numbers and then at the end Deuteronomy there, Moses' words were saying that this was bootcamp and it was training. It was getting them ready. And in some ways, I think about it as a retreat too, but maybe boot camp is a way better phrase, a better way to understand this. It's kind of that sense of, okay, you've been protected, isolated in many ways out in the wilderness, but you're going to have to go into this land where you can't forget me. You have to remember what I've done. And as you said, a big call is to pass on to your children,

teach your children about me because you have to be unique amongst these people. Again, in the wilderness, maybe you've been protected from infiltration. Although we actually had seen a number of stories towards the end of the book of numbers where they weren't necessarily protected. They did intermingle with the peoples that they were among, but this is going to be showtime, like you said, and that sense of, okay, how are you going to move forward? If this is the land, the promised land, there's going to be a certain way to live. But then for us, then there's going to be a certain, a certain attitude we need to have when we're reading these stories, because that's going to be, that's going to determine, I think a lot when it comes to whether we're reading these stories, because that's going to be, that's going to determine, I think, a lot when it comes to whether we're approaching these stories, the scripture,

this history, God's working with cynicism and skepticism, or whether we're going to approach this time period with faith. Right. Well, you're exactly right. We have to approach the scripture from an attitude, a certain attitude. And I would say there's two attitudes that we have to have. One is that all of our friends who are going to be joining you throughout this period an attitude, a certain attitude, and I would say there's two attitudes that we have to have. One is that all of our friends who are going to be joining you throughout this period are going to approach the difficult text in one of two ways. One, God is on trial, and that is, I don't like this. This doesn't fit. This wouldn't fly today. Okay, God, explain yourself, because I've already kind of, you know, the jury

has come back in, and I'm finding you wanting in these stories. And so people can approach it that way, or you can approach it as St. Thomas suggests, and that is that God is not arbitrary. You can approach this from the standpoint of trust. I know that he is faithful. I know that he's merciful. I know that he is just and he has covenant faithfulness. Therefore, Lord, I'm going to read it from that standpoint. And as St. Augustine says, if I can't understand it, I have to dwell here a little longer until I can see what I need to see. That's one thing, is we really want to challenge people about their perspective when they approach these stories. And then the second is, you have to remember that this was written for you. This was written to encourage you, and it reveals us. And this is ultimately about you. It's about you. And what happens to Israel

certainly happens to us, but please, Lord, may our response be one of faithfulness because we have learned about Jesus Christ. And so those are the two perspectives. It's not just their story. This is my story too. And what is my attitude as I read these stories? It's so important and powerful. Also, not to stop reading. In this last section that we had, when it came to Desert Wanderings, there was a section in Deuteronomy where the Lord talks about the blessings and the curses. And I know that for many people who contacted me after this as part of this community journeying through scripture, they contacted me saying like, this is really disturbing. I don't like the fact that God has said, if you are faithful, you have these blessings.

And if you're not faithful, there's these curses. And because they said, it just seems like here's God trying to instill the fear of God in them or trying to like maybe buy their affection or buy their faith because of, again, this kind of coercion kind of situation. And yet when you keep reading the very next day, which I understand, I understand that coming from a modern perspective, we, we, again, as you mentioned from the perspective where God is on trial, and if I don't understand it, it's, it must be because I know of unfair judges. Here's a God who reveals he's a good dad, but I know of bad dads, that kind of situation where we get all mixed up like this.

But the next day is the following chapter where the Lord says basically, or Moses says that, and those are the blessings and curses, but here is what God would say. He'll give you, yes, he visits those curses upon you so that you can once again come to repentance. And it's this sense of, it's never about the curse. It's never about the, the, the end isn't meant to be destruction.

The end is meant to be, I will allow these curses to come upon you. I'll allow this, this destruction to visit upon you so that you can come back. And that's what we're going to see, right? Even here in, in Joshua and Judges, this, this kind of almost this cycle of unfaithfulness and then destruction and then repentance. Yeah. You know, the one text that I think really stands out to me about this, the conquest with Joshua is when Joshua says, you know, he looks at the landscape and what the choices are out there now that they've come into the land. And he says, as for me and my house, we're going to serve the Lord. And that's the question that we would ask of anybody listening to the readings or actually reading the Bible is, who are you going to serve? Now, that moves into that next part of

the green period, and that's the Judges. And the book of Judges is a long book. And the way to understand it is that at the end of Joshua, Joshua dies, and suddenly they don't have any leadership anymore. They had Moses for 80 years, they had Joshua, and now they don't have any central leadership at all. And they go through this rather lengthy period of time with no leadership. And what happens is they enter into a cycle that is just deadly. And it's repeating seven times in the book of Judges, and it starts off with sin. And that sin, just remember S's here, the sin leads to servitude. And isn't that a truth? Sin leads to servitude. We become slaves. The servitude, the slavery leads to supplication. We pray and we ask God, please deliver us. And that supplication

leads to salvation. God raises up a judge, which is not like Judge Judy, but it is like a warrior king almost. And then they receive victory. And then after that salvation, then we see this repetition, sin entering in again. And this goes over and over seven times in the book of Judges. And Father, sometimes when I read this, I almost want to say, guys, hello. But then I'm looking in the mirror, you know, it's like, hello, Jeff. And I find myself in this and it's like, why didn't you guys get it? Because we didn't. You know, how come you didn't fly right? Because I didn't. Well, they keep forgetting, right? There's this silence in the land where God blesses them. Well, they keep forgetting, right?

There's this silence in the land where God blesses them. And then, as you said, it seems like on this repeat thing of like this, I just forget and I just turn away and I let myself drift. And one of the big, big things it seems like is that if they would just remember, if they would just, I know this is, it reminds me in so many ways of in the Christian life, I know this reminds me in so many ways of in the Christian life, how we're called to not just make the decision one time for Jesus to be the Lord of my life. But every day is that sense of, okay, let me remember what has God done in my life. Let me remember he's present here right now. Let me remember what is he calling me towards.

And then everything in my life becomes under his dominion and that he gets to be the leader of the life. And yet, again, the big temptation for all of us is to forget this. And what happens is, you know, go off the rails. Well, we have 12 judges in the book of judges, and some of them, they're not all one after the other. There are times when there is a couple of judges at the same time in different areas of the land, and you have to remember that when you read it. And there's 12 of them. One woman, her name is Deborah, in Hebrew, devora, buzzing bee is what it means in Hebrew. And we know of Deborah, but the most famous of all the judges is Samson. And Samson is an extraordinary individual. He is no doubt a very good-looking man. He is a practical joker. He loves women. And he has also taken an extraordinary vow. Imagine that, you know, you take a vow and yet you're struggling with everything everyone else is struggling, but you took a vow and that vow is called a Nazarite vow, which means that you are holy

unto the Lord. You are sanctified unto the Lord. You're not a priest, but you are sanctified. And this could be a man or a woman, by the way, scripture tells us, and you don't cut your hair. And that length of your hair is a sign of your faithfulness, your covenant faithfulness to God. And then he meets Delilah, who is not one of the Jewish women. She is from the neighboring nations, the Philistines, and everything goes sideways at this point. goes sideways at this point. Yeah. And that's, and it's so interesting because even though, like you said, even though here's Samson, who has been set apart at that as the Nazirite, he regularly seems to break this vow. He regularly seems, I mean, even, even the story of Samson and the lion before the Samson and Delilah that he, you know, even eats honey out of the dead carcass

of the lion. And as a Nazirite, though, those make a Nazirite, he wouldn't come into contact with, but he doesn't seem overly preoccupied with others. And that's one of the things that we realize is some of these judges, they're not, as you said, not merely, are they not Judge Judy? They're not all great. Like they're not, they do the job, but they're not necessarily kind of like some of the other characters we've met in the course of this Bible, the scripture time, is that even though they're called by God and even though God, the Spirit of the Lord is upon them, set apart by the Lord for service, but not always faithful to that being set apart. One of the keys to reading the Bible, as we're doing in chronological order, as a narrative, I just want to remind everybody, these are all stories, but they're all part of a story. And that bigger story is the story of salvation history and God's firstborn son among all the nations, Israel. And it is a story of a covenant relationship with God.

And what we see in Samson is certainly great stories. It's almost entertaining, you know. But what we see is a microcosm of the macro reality of Israel. In other words, what is happening to Samson individually is really happening to the nation, and that is they're supposed to be separate, holy unto the Lord, as it said back in Leviticus. And what they're doing is they're getting entangled with the Philistines, the neighboring nations. And what makes Israel strong is their uniqueness in their covenant relationship. And when he meets Delilah, what does she go after? She goes after Samson, my darling. What makes you so unique?

What makes you so different? And then he starts toying with sin here. And in a sense, you could say, all right, we're kind of toying with venial sin, but then he's going to do something that really is serious. He's going to actually give the secret and not only give the secret to Delilah, but he's going to give up the secret, which is his covenant faithfulness. And his hair is a demonstration of that. It is a metaphor in a sense. And she cuts his hair.

He loses his strength. And a lot of people, they want to look at this as a simple children's story. You know, what was Samson's strength? Oh, it was his hair. No, it wasn't. Because if it was in high school, I could have whipped all of you. But it was what it stood for, and it stood for the covenant faithfulness. And when you lose covenant faithfulness, you become weak, you become blind, and you become like all the other nations. And we see this even in the book of Revelation, which we're going to get at the end of the year, in that all seven churches, they lost

their usefulness in the world drama and they weren't faithful. They weren't faithful. So, this is a huge lesson with Samson that you're going to be going through. And I really, really encourage people to take a look at their own life. Well, as you said, there's a couple of different ways to be going through. And I really, really encourage people to take a look at their own life. Well, as you said, Dean, there's a couple of different ways to be tempted to read this. One is God is on trial. And the other is this is about something else

or someone else, as opposed to God is not on trial here. And also this is about me. And this is like we talked about before, scripture can be a mirror. It can be that flashlight spotlight. It can be that sandpaper that in this, this is one of those cases where it's a mirror where we hold this up and say, okay, I know,

I know personally, whenever I read the story of Samson and he didn't realize the spirit of God had left him, it's just one of those haunting lines in the chapters describing, he wakes up, you know, and his hair is gone. Samson, the Philistines are here, but he didn't realize the spirit of God had left him. And it's like, oh my goodness, Lord, I just, I don't ever want that to happen. And that's the, like that unique, like you said, the unique piece of the people of Israel is they're not the biggest of the nations. They're not the best. They're not the whatever, but they're chosen. And that's what makes God has chosen to be among them. He's chosen to reveal his heart to them. He chosen to use them to bless the world. And that's what makes them unique. And if we don't say with us as Christians now in this age, the age of the church,

that God has chosen us, not because of our beauty or our power or wisdom or our strength, but because he loves us and wants us to expand his blessings to the world. And we have to live like that or else, like you said, we're just like everyone else. We are. We become just like everybody else. And what you were describing just a moment ago, the church has a name for it, and it is very dangerous, and it's called presumption. And that is that I presume that God will be there even if I commit this sin.

But there comes a time where it was your last day on earth. It was your last day on earth. You didn't know that, that it was your last day on earth. But that's what happened. And so presumption is a very, very dangerous thing to do. And like you said, can you imagine suddenly when Samson realized? But here's the good news, and I love this, and this is a truth that will go throughout all the rest of the Bible reading for our friends, and that is God is a God of second

chances. God is a God of forgiveness. And this is important, and I would just encourage all who are listening, listen, we live in a world today where everything is permissible and nothing is forgivable, right? Everything is permissible, but nothing is forgivable. We'll let you do anything, but we're not going to forgive you. And if that was the case with Samson, you. And if that was the case with Samson, he would not have renewed his covenant by a demonstration of his hair, and he, on the last thing he did, brought down the gods of the Philistines. So I think that's an important thing to remember is that even though we live in a

world that permits everything, it's a world that won't forgive anything, but God will. But God will. And just as haunting as the line, Samson did not realize the spirit of the Lord had left him, is the promise of the next line, his eyes are gouged out, and after he's there to just grind the mill, it says, but Samson's hair began to grow. And that kind of piece, again, there's that sense of there's promise here, that it's not the end of the story yet. And when kind of piece, again, there's that sense of, there's promise here, that it's not the end of the story yet. And when he prays, Lord God, give me the strength once more to defeat the Philistines. Give me the strength to do what you've created me to do. Like you said, there's so much grace, even if there has been presumption, even if there had been sin,

but even if the spirit of the Lord left him, but his hair began to grow and he called upon the Lord and the Lord answered in a powerful way. And that's for us, again, this is the mirror and this is a microcosm of the good news and not only microcosm of the story of Israel, but also of our story, hopefully. And there's one more point as you're reading the book of Judges

that you're gonna notice at the very beginning of it and the very end of it, there's gonna be one phrase. notice at the very beginning of it and the very end of it, there's going to be one phrase. And that phrase is that every man did what was right in their own eyes. And that's where you land, is if every man does what is right in his own eyes. And that's something that is a challenge for us today is that we have been given leadership and God has given us leadership in the church. And we have to resist that temptation to say, you know what? I'm an American. I'm going to pull myself up by the bootstraps. And I think I know what's best. And I think I can make this decision. And I'll take it from here, God. That's one thing you don't say to

God is I'll take it from here. But, but that was, that was the attitude of Israel during the period of the judges. And, uh, I mean, you're a priest, you know, yourself, you work with people every day. Uh, the idea that I can take it from here and I'm going to do what's right in my own eyes, you know, exactly where that lands people. It doesn't, it doesn't lead to covenant faithfulness and doesn't even lead to happiness. There's that sense of, and that's what we see. I mean, the book of Judges, it's one of my more, I'm inspired by the book of Judges in many ways, but mostly because it reveals to me that, okay, this is, things can get worse.

No matter how bad I'm living in right now, realizing in whatever culture, country, nation, history, whatever it is, you read Judges and realize, okay, things can get worse because they're pretty dark through that entire book of Judges. Yes, God is working in the story, but we're also choosing to not be faithful in this story. So he raises up, I like how you mentioned that they're not Judge Judy. These judges are, they're more along the lines of like a William Wallace or a Frederick Douglass or a Harriet Tubman in the sense of these people that God chooses to use in order to, again, bring his people back to this place of strength again, bring his people back to a place of fidelity and faithfulness. Exactly. You know, one of the biggest

questions, and I'm a predictor here, and that is one of the biggest questions that's going to come out of this is, Father Mike, Jeff, what about this complete, utter obliteration of cities? And what I'm going to say about that is that we do have some help here. And that is that every Thursday at 2 p.m. Eastern Time, I'm on the Ascension Catholic Bible Study Facebook page, and we answer the difficult questions of the week. And during this period, trust me, we're going to get into this. It's called Harem Warfare, H-E-R-E-M, Harem Warfare. It is a complete holocaust to God, the wiping out of a

city. We're going to take a look at that. Did they do it? Did they not do it? Was there a purpose? Is it justified? So we will look at that, and I encourage people to bring their real difficult questions over to the Ascension's Catholic Bible Study page, and you can even hashtag AskJeffCavens, and we'll get to some of those questions. But trust me, that's going to come up big time. Absolutely. And that's on Facebook, right? That's every Thursday on Facebook. And that's recorded then, it gets posted later on? Right. It's live at two o'clock Eastern, but then we post it. Exactly right. And we've already done about 10 of them, or nine, something

like that. Which is going to be super helpful for people because, again, as you said, these books, this section, this time period will bring up so many questions. And that's one of them. And so I'm really grateful for you to be there. Jeff, as we conclude this episode, any last takeaways as we launch into this next time period? Sure. Well, I think that it'd be good for people

to take stock of their own heart and the movements of their own heart. As Israel is going to go through the period of judges, they're going to go through rocky road of doing everything what's right in their own eyes. And the next period we're going to be entering in is the royal kingdom. And what we're going to see is that Israel is finally going to say, we want a king. And I would just pray that people could take stock of the movement of their own heart from feeling alone, no direction, no leadership, to thank you, Lord, you have given me leadership. You have given me a direction. May I be faithful to your plan and be faithful to who you are. That's awesome. Yeah. Once again, letting these stories, avoiding the temptation of making God

on trial and avoiding the temptation of making this be about someone else or some other people. This is not impersonal. This is incredibly, incredibly personal for all of us. Speaking of, on this journey, I'm so grateful that you are still with us after all these days, after all these months, you're still journeying through scripture with us, this Bible in your podcast. And so please know that I am praying for you. Please be praying for me. And also as part of this community, keep praying for each other. With Jeff Cavins, my name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.