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 Cavens, who is going to introduce the next time period. We've gone through a number of time periods already, from the early to the patriarchs, to the desert wanderings, Exodus in Egypt. 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. Whatever happens now is going to be the content of the next number of days as we're going into Judges and the Book of Joshua. That's what we have. Jeff is joining us today as the expert, helping us to 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 exciting period.

Yeah, it'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 on your Bible timeline chart, this is the green period. 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.

Excuse me. Yet there's going to be not just green means go, in the sense of easy or in the sense of just go up and take the land. There's going to be some struggle that really marks, I think, this time of conquest and judges, I mean, obviously, conquest would involve struggle. But this time period isn't clean. 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 even catastrophe photography.

Yeah, but it'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 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. 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 Nibo, on the Eastern side of the Jordan, in modern day Jordan. Joshua is the one that's going to take them across in this first book, Joshua, and it's very dramatic.

They are going to go across the Jordan River, and the waters are going to be rolled back all the way to a city called Adam. That's about eight miles upstream. Now, this is interesting because the waters, the Canaanite God system, they're really worshiping Baal, and there's all kinds of derivatives of this. The two principal gods are Ashtar and El. Ashtar and El get together. They have a baby God, ain't he cute? 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 man is 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, 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 in Exodus, and it's show time. Now, 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. And the reason is, is because Joseph has two half-tribes, Ephreum 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 the Lord had said to the Levites, he said that you don'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 of Deuteronomy, there Moses' words were saying that this was boot camp and it was training. It was getting them ready. 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 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, 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 attitude we need to have when we're reading these stories, because 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. 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... 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, in 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 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 God, 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 of the blessings and the curses. I know that for many people who contacted me after this as part of this community journey reading through scripture, they contacted me saying, 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. Because they said, It just seems like here's God trying to instill the fear of God in them or trying to maybe buy their affection or buy their faith because of, again, this coercion situation. And yet when you keep reading, the very next day, which I understand. I understand that coming from a modern perspective, we, again, as you mentioned, from the perspective where God is on trial. And if I don't understand it, 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 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. Yes, he visits those curses upon you so that you can once again come to repentance. It's this sense of it's never about the curse. It's never about 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 destruction to visit upon you so that you can come back. And that's what we're going to see, even here in Joshua and Judges, this almost this cycle of unfaithfulness and then destruction and then repentance.

The one text that I think really stands out to me about the conquest with Joshua is when Joshua says 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 in my house, we're going to serve the Lord. And that's the question that we would ask of anybody listening 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 They're a 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 is 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. 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. How come you didn't fly right? Because I didn't.

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 I just forget, and I just turn away, and I let myself drift. One of the big things, it seems like, is that if they would just remember, if they would just... I know it. It 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 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? Just 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's 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, devourah, buzzing bee, is what it means in Hebrew. We know of Deborah, but the most famous of all the judges is Samson. 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 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. This could be a man or a woman, by the way, scripture tells us, and you don't cut your hair. That length of your hair is a sign of your faithfulness, your covenant faithfulness to God.

Then he meets the Delilah, who is not one of the Jewish women. She is from the neighboring nations, the Philistines, and everything goes sideways at this point.

Yeah, and that's so interesting because even Like you said, even though here's Samson, who has been set apart as the Nazareth, he regularly seems to break this vow. He regularly seems... I mean, even the story of Samson and the Lion, before the Samson and Delilah, that even eats honey out of the dead carcass of the lion. And as a Nazareth, those who make a nazraite, how 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. They do the job, but they're not necessarily 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 can use them, not everything they do is, Hey, go do that. And not everything they do is the role model example for us to follow. And Samson is consistent in that line of people who have been called by 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 first born son among all the nations, Israel. It is a story of a covenant relationship with God. What we see in Samson is certainly great stories. It's almost entertaining. 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 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. She cuts his hair. He loses his strength. A lot of people, they want to look at this as a simple children's story. 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. When you lose covenant faithfulness, you become weak, you You become blind, and you become like all the other nations. 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. 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 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 This is one of those cases where it's a mirror, where we hold this up and say, Okay, 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 and his hair is gone. Samson, the Philistines are here, but he didn't realize the spirit of God had left him. It's like, Oh, my goodness, Lord, I just don't ever want that to happen. Like you said, the unique piece of the people of Israel, they're not the biggest of the nations. They're not the best. They're not the whatever, but they're chosen. 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. That's what makes them unique. If we don't, it's the same as Christians now in this, the age of the church, that God has chosen us, not because of our beauty or our power, our wisdom, or our strength, but because he loves us and wants us to send, expand his blessings to the in 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. 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. 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, he would not have renewed his covenant by a demonstration of his hair, and 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. After 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 piece, again, there's that sense of this promise here, that is not the end of the story yet. And when he pray, 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 has 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. For us, again, this is the mirror, and this is a microcosm of the good news, not only a microcosm of the story of Israel, but also of Our story, hopefully.

There's one more point as you're reading the Book of Judges that you're going to notice at the very beginning of it and the very end of it, there's going to be one phrase. 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. 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 I don't say to God, I'll take it from here. But that was the attitude of Israel during the period of the judges. You're a priest, you know yourself, you work with people every day. 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 lead to covenant faithfulness. It doesn't even lead to happiness. There's that sense of... And that's what we see. 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 more along the lines of 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 these people back to a place of fidelity and faithfulness.

Exactly. One of the biggest questions, and I'm a predictor here, and that is one of 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? What I'm going to say about that is that we do have some help here, and that is that every Thursday at 2:00 PM Eastern Time, I'm on the Ascension Catholic Bible Study Facebook page, and we answer the difficult questions of the week. During this period, trust me, we're going to get into this. It's called Herem Warfare, H-E-R-E-M, Herem 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? We will look at that, and I encourage people to bring their real difficult questions over to the Ascensions Catholic Bible Study page, and you can even #askjeffcavens, and we'll get to some of those questions. But trust me, that's going to come up big time.

Absolutely. That's on Facebook, right? That's every Thursday on Facebook. That's recorded then that gets posted later on?

Right. It's live at 2:00 Eastern, but then we post it. Exactly right. 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. I'm really grateful for you to be there. Jeff, as we conclude this episode, any last takeaway ways as we launch into this next time period.

Sure. Well, I think that it would 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. The next period we're going to be entering in is the royal kingdom. What we're going to see is that Israel is finally going to say, We want a king. I would just pray that people could 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. Just did that again, 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 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 Cavens, my name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless..