The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Introduction to Egypt & Exodus (with Jeff Cavins) - 2023

Episode Date: January 27, 2023

Congratulations on completing the Patriarchs period! Today, Jeff Cavins joins Fr. Mike to explore the world of Egypt and Exodus. They discuss the common problems we encounter in this period and how to discover the true purpose of God's law. 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. Today, I am joined by Jeff Cavins to introduce the third time period of the Great Adventure Bible Timeline. This third time period after the patriarchs is called Egypt and the Exodus. And before we begin, a couple things.

One, stuff you probably already know by this point. The Bible translation that I'm using is the Revised Standard Version, the Second Catholic Edition, and I'm using the Great Adventure Bible from Ascension. If you want to be able to follow along, you can download your Catholic Bible in a Year reading plan by simply visiting ascensionpress.com slash Bible in a Year. If you haven't done that yet, no problem, no worries, no pressure. But also, if you have not yet subscribed, you can click that subscribe button in your podcast app. I don't know why you would have gotten this far without subscribing, but it's possible and you are free to do whatever you want to do. Speaking you are free to do whatever you want to do.

Speaking of being free to do whatever you want to do, one thing that I have been has been just placed on my heart. I just want to encourage people is I know the hardest day to read the Bible or the hardest day to pray is the day after the day you don't. It's that I had a busy weekend and I just I fell off the wagon. How do I get back on? I need to catch up. I'm falling behind.

There is truly no such thing as falling behind when it comes to this Bible in a year. What it is, is you probably have noticed it, but up until this day, I have not said, oh, today is January 21st or today is March 2nd. I've just said, this is the day 23, or this is day 34. That's on purpose. And that's so that you don't feel bound to listen every single day and being perfect. No, please no, please no. The hardest day to pray is the day after the day you don't. And the hardest day to read the Bible is the day after the day you don't. But simply pick it up and start again. It's no problem. If you don't

finish by December 31st, 2021, that is okay, because it means you are still allowing the Lord to speak to your heart. God is not asking for perfection in this. He is just asking for faithfulness. And so just be faithful. And when you drop it, pick it back up. That's all I just wanted to encourage you. But as I said, I'm joined today by Jeff Cavins. Jeff, as I said, is the inventor of the Great Adventure Bible and Great Adventure Bible timeline. And he's joining us today as we launch into this next time period, Egypt and Exodus. And Jeff, thank you so much for being willing to help all those who are listening to this podcast know where we are and give us some bearings about this next

step that the people of Israel, our family tree is taking. Well, thank you. It's a privilege to go on the journey with you. And, you know, it's one thing to have your Bible in front of you. It's another thing to know where you're at in it, where you were and where you're going. And I think that by the time people are done, they're going to have a good picture of the overarching story of salvation history. And hey, we've only gone through one book so far in two periods. So yeah, and that sense of like, I think up to now is a lot of the stories that people are familiar with. They're the stories that people are like, okay, yeah, these are the stories of Adam and Eve and Noah and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. And now we're

going into that story of what they do know it from the Prince of Egypt or from the Ten Commandments movies. But there's so much more that happens that aren't in those movies, that aren't in the stories that we necessarily read to kids. And the detail of that can be a place where this episode of talking with you can be so helpful for people where they know, okay, here is where we are now. They give some kind of context. One of the things we're trying to do, Father, is to help people to navigate the complicated areas of the story. And this is probably the first one

that we're going to encounter where if you don't understand what's happening in the book of Exodus, then you're gonna kind of miss out on the narrative. And that really begins with you finished up Genesis and now we're starting Exodus. But what a lot of people don't know is we have 400 years that just went by and there's no story in between there. It's you guess, you know? And so when we pick up with Exodus,

it's after 400 years of being down in Egypt. And during that 400 years, the current Pharaoh doesn't respect the relationship that Joseph had 400 years ago. And so, we find Israel in bondage in Egypt, and they are tired of it, as we all are. And we could say they were quarantined for 400 years, And they cry out to God and say, we've had enough. We're crying out to you. And God raises up a deliverer by the name of Moses. And that's where we pick up on this particular book and this whole event that we're going to go through now. Yeah. And that's so good, especially because you turn one page and you go fast forward 400 years. And as you said, the last pages of Genesis are the people of Israel on top of the world. They've been given some incredible land. They've been given blessing by the Lord and also

by Pharaoh. And then you turn a page and it's like, wow, 400 years later, and they have not been blessed. Now you had mentioned before that there are some problems that arise when people encounter Exodus, and that kind of can trip them up. What are some of those things that become obstacles for folks? Well, up until now, it's kind of a basic story, but now in Exodus, we're going to be introduced to a number of new major, major things in the story. And I guess we can kind of move up to that. They cry out to God and God raises up Moses. His name is Moshe, which means to draw out. And that's what his calling is going to be, to draw them out of bondage. But it comes at quite a price. And it is an amazing story of how God

tries to break them from Egyptian bondage. They are eating like the Egyptians, they're worshiping like the Egyptians, they even dress like the Egyptians. I won't get into that. They walk like Egyptians. Sorry, were you gonna say that? I said I was going to avoid that, but you got it in there and that's good. I'm so sorry you are right he's gonna not say this he has to so so we we you're right i mean everything about their life they were addicted to idolatry and so god had to do something amazing to draw them out and turn them

to himself and that's where we have the 10 plagues. And the result of that is their freedom comes and they go through the Red Sea and the Egyptians follow them and the sea collapses on them. And then for three months in the book of Exodus, they travel down to Mount Sinai. And God says to them, you know, your clothes aren't going to wear out. I'm even going to, I'm going to provide food for you, which we know as? Manna. Manna. Exactly. Manna.

And manna means, what is it? You know, what is it? We're not used to this. We have garlics and leeks back there. And what is this? And so God had said something very important during this period. He said, I brought you out here to show you that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of my mouth. And so after three months of traveling south, they end up at Mount Sinai and they're

going to be there for one year. And this is where everything changes in that one year. And if you don't get it, then you're not going to understand most of the rest of the Old Testament. Right. It's that sense of like, here is God who brings them from that place of slavery, that house of bondage, sets them free in this miraculous way. As you said, those plagues, oftentimes we can just hear them, read them as one bad thing upon the next, that it seems like God is simply punishing the Egyptians. It seems like, in fact, the 10th plague being the death of the firstborn can be really troubling. I think we have really sensitive consciences and really sensitive hearts these days, which is a good thing.

That can be disturbing for us. But at the same time, what you're pointing out is God is setting these people who are addicted, he's setting them free. And I mean, think about if this isn't too much of a stretch, I did some reading about the early stages in research when it came to chemotherapy and how there were people who really desired to save the lives of these patients

who like even children who had leukemia, these people who had cancer. But no one was willing to give the dose of chemotherapy, those drugs that could kill the cancer or kill the leukemia because of the pain it caused these children, the pain it caused these people until there were a couple of doctors who said, we have to do this because to set them free from this thing that is killing them requires some pretty serious actions. And it seems like in some ways, that's kind of what God is doing with these 10 plagues, even leading to that, that 10th plague being the death of the firstborn. Well, from there, yeah, go ahead.

Yeah. Well, I was going to say for sure, this is going to be a painful freedom. And isn't it always, I mean, we say to people, this is what you need to do to become free. And they go, well, I don't know if I could really do that. And then they come to the conclusion of maybe life wasn't so bad, you know, with my addiction. And that's what Israel, that's what they face. And they start to blame Moses. You brought us out here to kill us. There weren't there enough graves back there, you know, where we were.

So they end up at Sinai for a year and something big takes place. And that is that God is going to make a covenant with Israel. And we know that there's been this progression of covenants all along since you started reading, starting with Adam and Eve, with one holy couple. And then after that, you have one holy tribe with Abraham. And now we have one holy nation. We have a family, rather. We go from Noah, family, tribe with Abraham. And now we have one holy nation. And God's making a covenant with them,

which means I'm gonna do this for you. You're my people. This is what you need to do in response to me. And it goes south very quickly. The covenant was made chapter 24. By chapter 32, we have the golden calf incident and everything looks like it's going crazy. But it's in the midst of that, that we have three of the most important things to get during this period of reading. And I'll just give you those quickly. One is that there's going to be kind of a laicizing of the nation. And there's going to be one tribe that rises up as the priests, and those are the Levites.

And that's where Moses and Aaron are from. And so, you have the priests, the Levites, and then, and by the way, this takes place in chapter 32, keynote, keynote, rumble strips, this is where Leviticus belongs. Right, exactly. That's where Leviticus belongs because that is for the priests and it is for the people, the holiness code. So we have the priesthood, but then there's two other things at Sinai that are huge. One is the tabernacle. And this comes as a result of Moses being up on the mountain and seeing like a heavenly vision of what it looks like to worship. And we see that also at the end of the Bible in John's revelation, and you'll see it at your

local Catholic church, I might add. But then the third thing is, is that God gives them his Torah. He gives them his law. And that law is not meant to put them down. It's not meant to control their lives. Like we think, you know, my dad grounded me. He hates me. He's making my life miserable. No, he loves you. And so the more sin, the more law, and the law is to get you to focus on your relationship with God, that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. So as we move forward, we got to keep track of the Levites. We keep track of the tabernacle. And once you do this, you're prepared to really start understanding books like Hebrews in the New Testament, the work of Jesus as the high priest, and certainly his word is given,

which we're going to find out in the New Testament that Jesus is going to fulfill every single thing that we're reading. Right. He is the word made flesh and the great high priest and the worship of him. That's so good. I'm so glad you pointed out, especially because those three elements that come to the surface towards the end of Exodus, they become handles that you can hold on to. You can see this, that here's the priestly nation, but nope, now all of a sudden it's just this one tribe or this one family in the midst of the people of Israel. And then the worship and the law is so important because that's, as you noted, Leviticus comes up at that time.

And one of the things I'd like to ask you about is we're going to be going through, I mean, starting as soon as people are listening to Exodus, we're also going to be concurrently reading Leviticus. And something about Leviticus that can be, you know, that's the place that people stop reading a lot of times because it just seems so foreign, seems so confusing, seems so maybe even at this point in our lives, like unnecessary. We don't have temple worship anymore. We don't have worship like this anymore. So why would it be important? And what should people be, if you don't mind me asking this, what should people be

paying attention to on that non-narrative book, Leviticus, as we're going through the story of Exodus? No, that's a great question. And I would have to say that in my studies over the years, and in the beginning, it was like Leviticus, skip. And now it's not. It's a very critical book. And I might add that in Jesus' day, all of the children who started their biblical studies in Israel started with Leviticus of all the books, not Genesis, not Exodus, not Numbers or Deuteronomy, but Leviticus. And the reason was that Leviticus talks about holiness. It talks about kadosh, holiness, to be totally distinct, to be totally separate, to be holy. And I think that the thing that I would add to the reading when people are listening to you during Leviticus is this. God brought Israel out into the desert to do something. And he said in Leviticus, he said six different times, he said,

be holy as I am holy. Be holy as I'm holy. And four more times he said that. And then he went on to say, he said, you need to learn to discern between the good and the bad, that which is clean, that which is not unclean. And then he also said, do not obey the laws of the place you came from, nor the foundation of discipleship, which is God is discipling a nation who has come out of bondage, come out of addiction, and he's saying, if you want to be my people and you want to truly live free, you've got to imitate me, and I'm going to be in your midst. I'm going to be in the tabernacle. I'll be with you. But I think that it's really important for people to realize as they read Leviticus, maybe you won't understand everything about it, but listen carefully for how God is forming a nation, what they wear, what they eat, who they hang around with, how they treat their neighbors. All of this really goes back to God is saying, I am discipling you. So we learn a great lesson, and that is that imitation is the foundation

of discipleship. And that will carry on into the New Testament as well. Right. And that's so powerful that you're saying this because the natural temptation that so many of us have is the same temptation that the people of Israel had, which is, I want to be just like everyone else. I want to be just like the people, whether that be Egypt or in Canaan, that sense of saying, wherever I am, that God knows their hearts. And that's in so many ways why he's just like, he's healing this by calling them again and again, or at least calling them out of this, like you said, discipleship of saying, no, actually, if you belong to me, and that's the thing is you had mentioned this too, when it comes to the law, these aren't like, again, parental laws of someone who's trying

to ground someone or trying to keep you under my thumb. It's there's first God establishing the relationship, right? He establishes that covenant. And now here is the law, meaning here's how you live out this relationship. And that living out is because I know your hearts and we have a law because I know your heart. I know your heart is going to want to not be like me. I know you're going to want to be like the people around you. And that's so good to be able to hear that because that's our hearts too. And that's why I think I'm so glad that you pointed out that Leviticus is not just about distant rules that have nothing to do with us right now. A, they're fulfilled in so many ways in the new and eternal covenant or new and eternal sacrifice that of Jesus Christ.

But also because, like you said, this is a key for discipleship that God called his people. He set them out. Here's how we worship. And it's not like he just said, and I'll worship however you want. It's how he's laying the groundwork for that worship in spirit and in truth that Jesus ushers in. Yeah, and I would encourage all of our listeners, I would encourage you to not just look at the life of Israel and say, wow, they sure didn't learn, did they? You know, and get a clue. But to look into the mirror and ask, what is it in my life that God is trying to

bring me out of? Are there addictions? Are there ways of thinking? Are there habits in my life where this is really keeping me from the intimacy and that relationship with God that he wants? And as you read, take these principles and apply them to yourself. Your eyes are going to be opened. I know mine are. And I think that this is one of the mistakes that people go into or they fall to when they read the Bible is that it's for somebody else when the New Testament says this was written for your encouragement. Yeah, that's so, so important. Jeff, I thank you for introducing this next time period for us. Before I just offer a prayer, are there any last words?

I know that was really inspiring about recognizing that call that I can't just say, oh, this is the broken people of Israel. They're unfaithful. I need to see myself that the scripture in those ways can be a mirror to me, right? It reveals myself. I can see myself in there. It can be a flashlight where it searches out the dark parts of my heart. And it can be that sandpaper that like, oh, this is where I'm being, I'm being, the Lord's

doing some work on me to kind of smooth some things out in my life. Are there any last thoughts as people are journeying through Exodus? Pay attention to those three major changes during this reading period of the priesthood, the tabernacle, and the Word of God. In our lives today, we have the privilege of being under the care of priests, and we have the privilege of worshiping according to a way, and that's the Eucharist, the celebration of the Mass. And we have the privilege of being the people of the Word, the sacred scripture and the sacred tradition, and really ask God to give you some illumination on those three things, recognize them at church, recognize them in

their life, embrace them, and thank God for all three. That's awesome. And I thank God for all three, but also for you and for the timeline and for this ability to journey with the people that we've been going with for these last number of days and through the rest of this year. It's been such a gift. And so I just want to take a moment and just thank the Lord and ask his continued blessing. We pray in the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit, Father in heaven, in the name of Jesus Christ, your Son, we ask you to please receive our thanksgiving, receive our praise, because you are good and you have revealed your heart to us. I ask that you please continue to reveal your heart to us as we take this next step. Reveal your heart in the holiness code of Leviticus. Reveal your

heart in the story of your faithfulness in the midst of our unfaithfulness and Israel's unfaithfulness, but you are steadfast in your steadfast love. Remind us this day of your steadfast love for each one of us personally and individually as well. Lord God, we give you praise. We thank you. And we ask if you'd give us the help, the help to keep taking those next steps forward as we journey through this Bible in a year. We make this prayer in the mighty name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. In the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen. Jeff, thank you so much. And I cannot express how deeply grateful I am for you and for all those who are listening.

I am so grateful that we're on this journey together. My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.