Day 9: Sodom and Gomorrah — The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

hi i'm father mike schmitz and you're listening to the bible in the ear podcast where we encounter god's voice and live life through the lens of scripture the bible any 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 9. let's get started we are continuing our journey with abraham in genesis chapter 18 in chapter 19 we're also continuing our journey with the righteous suffering man job by reading job chapter 7 and chapter 8 we're also following the lord's wisdom by reading proverbs chapter 2 now in the second chapter proverbs reading verses one through five the bible translation that i'm using and use every day is revised standard version catholic edition it's the rsv hyphen ce i'm using the great adventure bible from ascension and also following the reading plan that you can also download if you go to ascensionpress.com bible in a year you can get your own catholic bible in the ear reading plan by going to ascensionpress.com bible in a year you can get these updates on the podcast by simply subscribing and you can also sign up for our email list by texting the word catholic bible to the number 33777 with all that out of the way let's get started with genesis chapter 18 in chapter 19. and the lord appeared to abraham by the oaks of mamra as he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day he lifted up his eyes and looked and behold three men stood in front of him when he saw them he ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed himself to the earth and said my lord if i have found favor in your sight do not pass by your servant let a little water be brought and wash your feet and rest yourselves under the tree while i fetch a morsel of bread that you may refresh yourselves and after that you may pass on since you have come to your servant so they said do as you have said and abraham hastened into the tent to sarah and said make ready quickly three measures of fine meal knead it and make cakes and abraham ran to the herd and took a calf tender and good and gave it to the servant who hastened it to prepare it then he took curds and milk and the calf which he had prepared and set it before them and he stood by them under the tree while they ate they said to him where is sarah your wife and he said she is in the tent the lord said i will surely return to you in the spring and sarah your wife shall have a son and sarah was listening at the tent door behind him now abraham and sarah were old advanced in age it had ceased to be with sarah after the manner of women so sarah laughed to herself saying after i have grown old and my husband is old shall i have pleasure the lord said to abraham why did sarah laugh and say shall i indeed bear a child now that i am old is anything too hard for the lord at the appointed time i will return to you in the spring and sarah shall have a son but sarah denied saying i did not laugh for she was afraid he said no but you did laugh then the men sent out from there and they looked toward sodom and abraham went with them to set them on their way the lord said shall i hide from abraham what i'm about to do seeing that abraham shall become a great and mighty nation and all the nations of the earth shall bless themselves by him no for i have chosen him that he may charge his children and his household after him to keep the way of the lord by doing righteousness and justice so that the lord may bring to abraham what he has promised him then the lord said because the outcry against sodom and gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave i will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry which has come to me and if not i will know so the men turned from there and went toward sodom but abraham still stood before the lord then abraham drew near and said will you indeed destroy the righteous with the wicked suppose there are 50 righteous within the city will you then destroy the place and not spirit for the fifty righteous who are in it for be it from you to do such a thing to slay the righteous with the wicked so that the righteous fair as the wicked far be that from you shall not the judge of all the earth do right and the lord said if i find that saddam 50 righteous people in the city i will spare the whole place for their sake abraham answered behold i have taken upon myself to speak to the lord i who am but dust and ashes suppose five of the fifty righteous are lacking will you destroy the whole city for the lack of five and he said i will not destroy it if i find forty-five there again he spoke to him and said suppose 40 are found there he answered for the sake of the forty i will not do it then he said oh let not the lord be angry and i will speak suppose thirty are found there he answered i will not do it if i find thirty there he said behold i have taken upon myself to speak to the lord suppose twenty are found there he answered for the sake of twenty i will not destroy it then he said oh let not the lord be angry and i will speak again but this once suppose ten are found there he answered for the sake of the ten i will not destroy it and the lord went his way when he had finished speaking to abraham and abraham returned to his place the two angels came to saddam in the evening and lot was sitting in the gate of sodom when lot saw them he rose to meet them and bowed himself with his face to the earth and said my lords turn aside i pray you to your servant's house and spend the night and wash your feet then you may rise up early and go on your way they said no we will spend the night in the street but he urged them strongly so that they turned aside to him and entered his house and he made them a feast and baked unleavened bread and they ate but before they lay down the men of the city the men of sodom both young and old all the people to the last man surrounded the house and they called to lot where are the men who came to you tonight bring them out to us that we may know them lot went out of the door to the men shut the door after him and said i beg you my brothers do not act so wickedly behold i have two daughters who have not known man let me bring them out to you and do to them as you please only do nothing to these men for they have come under the shelter of my roof but they said stand back and they said this fellow came to sojourn and he would play the judge now we will deal worse with you than with them then they pressed hard against the man lot and drew near to break the door but the men put forth their hands and brought lot into the house to them and shut the door and they struck with blindness the men who were at the door of the house both small and great so that they wearied themselves groping for the door then the men said the lot have you anyone else here sons-in-law sons daughters or anyone who you have in the city bring them out of the place for we are about to destroy this place because the outcry against its people has become great before the lord and the lord has sent us to destroy it so lot went out and said to his sons-in-law who were to marry his daughters up get out of this place for the lord is about to destroy the city but he seemed to his sons-in-law to be jesting when morning dawned the angels urged lots saying arise take your wife and your two daughters who are here lest you be consumed in the punishment of the city but he lingered so the men seized him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand the lord being merciful to him and they brought him forth and set him outside the city and when they had brought them forth they said flee for your life do not look back or stop anywhere in the valley flee to the hills lest you be consumed and lot said to them oh no my lords behold your servant has found favor in your sight and you have shown me great kindness in saving my life but i cannot flee to the hills lest the disaster overtake me and i die behold yonder city is near enough to flee to and it is a little one let me escape there is it not a little one and my life will be saved he said to him behold i grant you this favor also but i will not overthrow the city of which you have spoken make haste escape there for i can do nothing till you arrive there therefore the name of the city was called zoar the sun had risen on the earth when lot came to zoar then the lord reigned on sodom and gomorrah brimstone and fire from the lord of heaven and he overthrew those cities in all the valley and all the inhabitants of the cities and what grew on the ground but lot's wife behind him looked back and she became a pillar of salt and abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the lord and he looked down towards sodom and gomorrah and toward all the land of the valley and beheld and behold the smoke of that land went up like the smoke of a furnace so it was that when god destroyed the cities of the valley god remembered abraham and sent lot out of the midst of the overthrow when he overthrew the cities in which lot dwelt now lot went up out of zoar and dwelt in the hills with his two daughters for he was afraid to dwell in zoar so he dwelt in a cave with his two daughters and the firstborn said to the younger our father is old and there is not a man on earth to come into us after the manner of all the earth come let us make our father drink wine and we will lie with him that we may preserve offspring through our father so they made their father drink wine that night and the firstborn went in and lay with her father he did not know when she laid down or when she arose and on the next day the firstborn said to the younger behold i lay last night with my father let us make him drink wine tonight also then you go in and lie with him that we may preserve offspring through our father so they made their father drink wine that night also and the younger arose and lay with him and he did not know when she lay down or when she arose thus both the daughters of lot were with child by their father the firstborn bore a son and called his name moab he is the father of the moabites to this day the younger also bore a son and called his name ben ami he is the father of the ammonites to this day we now continue with our readings from the book of job yesterday job responded to eliphaz his friend who tried to convince job that he must have done something wrong where he should not complain against the lord and job responded to eliphaz now job continues to speak and he's spoken to by a second friend bildad this is job chapter 7 and chapter 8. job said has not a man a hard service upon earth and are not his days like the days of a hireling like a slave who longs for the shadow like a hireling who looks for his wages so i am allotted months of emptiness and nights of misery are a portion to me when i lie down i say when shall i arise but the night is long and i am full of tossing till dawn my flesh is clothed with worms and dirt my skin hardens then breaks out afresh my days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle they come to their end without hope remember that my life is a breath my eye will never again see good the eye of him who sees me will behold me no more while your eyes are upon me i shall be gone as the cloud fades and vanishes so he who goes down to sheol does not come up he returns no more to his house nor does his place know him anymore therefore i will not restrain my mouth i will speak in the anguish of my spirit i will complain in the bitterness of my soul am i the sea or a sea monster that you set a guard over me when i say my bed will comfort me my couch will ease my complaint then you scare me with dreams and terrify me with visions so that i would choose strangling in death rather than my bones i loathe my life i would not live forever let me alone for my days are a breath what is man that you make so much of him that you set your mind upon him visit him every morning and test him every moment how long will you not look away from me now let me alone till i swallow my spittle if i sin what do i do to you you watcher of men why have you made me your mark why have i become a burden to you why do you not pardon my transgression and take away my iniquity for now i shall lie in the earth you will seek me but i shall not be then build that the shoe had answered how long will you say these things and the words of your mouth be a great wind does god pervert justice or does the almighty pervert the right if your children have sinned against him he has delivered them into the power of their transgression if you will seek god and make supplication to the almighty if you are pure and upright surely then he will rouse himself for you and reward you with a rightful habitation and though your beginning was small your latter days will be very great for inquire i beg of you of bygone ages consider what the fathers have found for we are but of yesterday and know nothing for our days on earth our shadow will they not teach you and tell you and utter words out of their understanding can papyrus grow where there is no marsh can reeds flourish where there is no water while yet in flower and not cut down they wither before any other plant such are the paths of all who forget god the hope of the godless man shall perish his confidence breaks in sunder and his trust is a spider's web he leans against his house but it does not stand he lays hold of it but it does not endure he thrives before the sun and his shoots spread over his garden his roots twine about the stone heap he lives among the rocks if he is destroyed from his place then it will deny him saying i have never seen you behold this is the joy of his way and out of the earth others will spring behold god will not reject a blameless man nor take the hand of evildoers he will yet fill your mouth with laughter and your lips with shouting those who hate you will be clothed with shame and the tent of the wicked will be no more proverbs chapter 2 verses 1 through 5 my son if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding yes if you cry out for insight and raise your voice for understanding if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures then you will understand the fear of the lord and find the knowledge of god father in heaven we thank you so much we thank you for your word we thank you for revealing your heart to us we thank you for all of the gift that your word is when you're when it's proclaimed to us and we give you praise we ask you to please in the name of your son jesus christ father in heaven receive our thanks receive our praise now amen in the name of the father son and holy spirit amen you guys oh man confusing right um here is the story of abraham and sarah they're blessed with a child isaac is going to be born to them and then these three figures these three figures that um in some way are types of the trinity in some ways uh whether referred to as angels we don't know who these personages are because abraham is also standing before the lord as they go to these three people go down into uh gamora or sodom i mean so we we don't know necessarily who they are but we don't we know what their role is and the role is to exact justice now this is very very important their goal was to enact justice not vengeance is very very important justice is giving someone what is their due while vengeance is simply uh again taking out my anger upon somebody and this justice is clearly established in the story today because you have god destroying an entire city and abram challenges him on that and says well but but lord if there's if there's any righteous people 50 and 45 and 30 and 20 and 10 would you still destroy it would you destroy those 10 with for the sake of the unrighteous along with the unrighteous and god says no i'm just i would not do that for the sake of those 10 righteous i would spare the city in fact you have i guess in some ways you have lot and his daughters and his wife who were somewhat righteous a little bit more righteous because their relationship with abraham and the strangers saved their lives but then you have this devastating so you have the kind of justice established but you have this devastatingly awful story about the daughters of lot and how the daughters of lot basically have relations with their father so that they can continue their bloodline this and you find like well gosh the bible didn't say and that was wrong right sometimes what we have is we don't necessarily have the bible telling us that something was wrong that they did the wrong thing we have the bible showing us that they did the wrong thing why because the descendants of these uh incest essentially are the moabites and the ammonites who became then the enemies of the israelites they became the enemies of the people of the chosen people of god and so there is this way in which the scriptures are pointing out like this was exactly the wrong thing to do and um from this union this sinful evil union there was uh these two peoples the ammonites and the moabites who were the enemies of the israelites there are so many questions that come up um in all these readings including the questions of well at the one point lot offered his daughters to these men how how is that good it wasn't good this is this is the key thing just because something's in the bible doesn't mean that it's a good but we can still learn from it even if it doesn't immediately make sense that goes to the book of job today as we're following the story of job and you have his friends you had eliphaz yesterday in bildad today saying that job this is this is what we know we know that god is just and he never ever allows evil to happen to someone who doesn't deserve it somehow so just basically admit that you deserve it somehow because we know god's just and here's bill dad today who's defending god's justice at the same time it doesn't help his friend i don't know if you've ever had that happen where um if someone who gives you kind of like the pat answer right they give you the memorized answer this is the religious answer of why something horrible is happening in your life and you're like that doesn't help at all and that's going to be job's response to him as well which is just like i appreciate no he doesn't even say he appreciates it he is basically saying but i know this and we know this is true too because we read the beginning of the book of job job says but i'm righteous i haven't done anything evil i do believe god is just but i don't get what's going on here um and that's the big question that obviously the book of job raises if god is just why is there so much evil in the world why do good people suffer i want to spare you i want to share with you i guess the story is going to end it's not going to end with an answer it's not going to end with here is why i just want i remember reading this book the book of job for the first time maybe in high school or college thinking okay this is going to be the answer to the problem of evil then god's going to say here is why here's why bad things happen to good people here's why there's suffering in the world and i got to the end and realized oh that wasn't really an answer and that's part of it the what's happening is we're going on the journey with job and so my invitation is rather than seeking an answer like where is the where's that nugget where's that kernel that says this is why my invitation first all is to just journey with job to enter into his suffering and to allow uh his questions be our questions and allow our questions to be his questions so that we can uh get his ultimate answer because there is an answer even if it's not the answer why i'll tell you a hint the answer is not a why the answer is who but we're on our journey and we're continuing our journey today and tomorrow and the next day if you have not yet downloaded your catholic bible india reading plan please visit ascensionpress.com bible in a year please subscribe to this podcast you can you can also like and share and all those kind of things that'd be great um and you can also sign up for our email list by texting the word catholic bible that's two words but it's combined into one word catholic bible to the number three three seven seven seven oh as i said my name is father mike and i'm so grateful to be able to read the bible with you and on being on this journey with you as well please know of my prayers this day and every day as we continue to do this catholic bible in a year man oh man god bless you [Music] you

Channel: The Bible in a Year & More: Fr. Mike & Jeff Cavins

Views: 280,522

Keywords: ascension, ascension press, ascension presents, the bible in a year, bible in a year podcast, fr. mike, fr. mike schmitz, father mike, fr. mike schmidt, biy, biay, fr. mike bible in a year, jeff cavins, bible reading plan, biblical worldview, catholic podcasts, sodom and gomorrah, sodom, lot, lot's wife, job, genesis 18, genesis 19, genesis, book of job, proverbs, proverbs 2

Id: 0P7pyHLz0CY

Length: 21min 32sec (1292 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 13 2021