The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)
Day 67: God's Justice and Refuge (2025)
Sat, 08 Mar 2025
Fr. Mike breaks down God's divine judgement, and the refuge he offers to those who are faithful to him. Today's readings are Numbers 18, Deuteronomy 19-20, and Psalm 99. 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.
Chapter 1: Who is Father Mike Schmitz and what is the Bible in a Year podcast about?
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 is day 67. We are reading from chapter 18 of Numbers, Numbers 18. We're also reading two chapters in the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 19 and chapter 20. We're also praying Psalm 99 today.
As always, I am reading from the Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition, as far as my Bible translation, as well as the fact that I'm reading from specifically the Great Adventure Bible from Ascension. If you're interested, you can download your Bible in a Year reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com slash Bible in a Year. You can also subscribe to this podcast. I don't know.
Again, I keep saying this because it's in the 60s for crying out loud. If you have not yet subscribed, you can do that right now. Why not? Go ahead and do that. Nonetheless, it is day 67. We are reading from Numbers 18, Deuteronomy 19 and 20, praying Psalm 99. The book of Numbers chapter 18, duties of priests and Levites.
So the Lord said to Aaron, you and your sons and your father's house with you shall bear iniquity in connection with the sanctuary. And you and your sons with you shall bear iniquity in connection with your priesthood.
And with you bring your brethren also, the tribe of Levi, the tribe of your father, that they may join you and minister to you while you and your sons with you are before the tent of the covenant. They shall attend you and attend to all the duties of the tent, but shall not come near to the vessels of the sanctuary or to the altar lest they and you die.
they shall join you and attend to the tent of meeting for all the service of the tent and no one else shall come near you and you shall attend to the duties of the sanctuary and the duties of the altar that there be wrath no more upon the sons of israel and behold i have taken your brethren the levites from among the sons of israel they are a gift to you given to the lord to do the service of the tent of meeting
And you and your sons with you shall attend to your priesthood for all that concerns the altar and that is within the veil, and you shall serve. I give your priesthood as a gift, and anyone else who comes near shall be put to death. the priest's portion.
Then the Lord said to Aaron, and behold, I have given you whatever is kept of the offerings made to me, all the consecrated things of the sons of Israel. I have given them to you as a portion and to your sons as a perpetual debt. This shall be yours of the most holy things reserved from the fire.
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Chapter 2: What are today's Bible readings in the podcast?
It is a covenant of salt forever before the Lord for you and for your offspring with you. And the Lord said to Aaron, You shall have no inheritance in their land, neither shall you have any portion among them. I am your portion, and your inheritance among the sons of Israel.
To the Levites I have given every tithe in Israel for an inheritance, in return for their service which they serve, their service in the tent of meeting. And henceforth the sons of Israel shall not come near the tent of meeting, lest they bear sin and die. But the Levites shall do the service of the tent of meeting, and they shall bear their iniquity.
It shall be a perpetual statute throughout your generations, and among the sons of Israel they shall have no inheritance. For the tithe of the sons of Israel, which they present as an offering to the Lord, I have given to the Levites for an inheritance. Therefore I have said of them that they shall have no inheritance among the sons of Israel.
And the Lord said to Moses, Moreover, you shall say to the Levites, When you take from the sons of Israel the tithe which I have given you from them for your inheritance, then you shall present an offering from it to the Lord, a tithe of the tithe. And your offering shall be reckoned to you as though it were the grain of the threshing floor and as the fullness of the winepress.
So shall you also present an offering to the Lord from all your tithes, which you receive from the sons of Israel. And from it you shall give the Lord's offering to Aaron the priest. Out of all the gifts to you, you shall present every offering due to the Lord from all the best of them, giving the hallowed part from them.
Therefore, you shall say to them, when you have offered from it the best of it, then the rest shall be reckoned to the Levites as produce of the threshing floor and as produce of the wine press. And you may eat it in any place, you and your households, for it is your reward in return for your service in the tent of meeting.
And you shall bear no sin by reason of it, when you have offered the best of it. And you shall not profane the holy things of the sons of Israel, lest you die.
The Book of Deuteronomy Chapter 19 and Chapter 20 Chapter 19 Cities of Refuge
When the Lord your God cuts off the nations whose land the Lord your God gives you and you dispossess them and dwell in their cities and in their houses, you shall set apart three cities for you in the land which the Lord your God gives you to possess.
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Chapter 3: What duties were assigned to the priests and Levites in Numbers 18?
So even though they're receiving the gift of the tithe of the people of God, the people of Israel, they also have to offer a tithe, which is so beautiful and so important. Just fair and just. And that leads us into the next book we are reading from Deuteronomy. And in Deuteronomy, it talks about justice. In fact, there are these things called cities of refuge.
We just heard about them in chapter 19. The cities of refuge, three of them at first. And then God says, but when you come into the land, if you get the whole of the property of the land that I want to give you, you're going to have six of these cities of refuge. And they are for what? Because in God's justice, if someone murders another person, by God's justice, they have to die.
But if they murder accidentally, what happens is they get to, I mean, what's going to happen is someone's going to, in their heat of their anger, like you killed my father, prepare to die. Even if accidentally, there's cities of refuge that you can run to. And the Avenger, the person who wants to kill you, cannot enter and kill you. Places of, again, as I said, places of refuge.
At the same time, it specifically states that if you, though, are someone who has killed someone on purpose and you're onto a city of refuge and the accuser comes, again, not just one accuser, but two or three, then the elders of that city of refuge will hand you over to trial. And that's the important piece here.
It's trying to avoid crimes of passion or revenge, but saying, no, we're going to only exact this justice when it's been expressly proven or demonstrated that this was murder, not simply manslaughter. And I think, again, here is the people of God who are being brought from a place of just kind of, you know, the Wild West to a place of, no, this is order. We're a people of law now.
We're people of justice now, not just vengeance. which goes on to the last chapter we read today, which is Deuteronomy chapter 20, having to do with war. Always giving a people that they attack the option to surrender. Always giving the people the option to have peace, unless it was the people of the tribes where they are going to enter in the land of Canaan.
And those people, they would not give an opportunity to surrender. Why? And this is really difficult for us. Why is this the case? This is a very unusual kind of warfare. This is a very unusual kind of situation because it strikes us as being so, so backwards and so, not just backwards, but so violent and over, not justice anymore, right? It seems unfair. It seems cruel.
These are what you might call Wars of judgment. These are not simple battles, but in this context, and we have to understand this, these are wars of judgment. The people of Canaan were living violent, destructive, and wicked lives.
In fact, a number of times we've already heard that the Lord God has expressly noted that in the place you're about to enter, in the land of Canaan, in the promised land, One of the practices that they have is they will sacrifice their own children, their sons and their daughters, to this false god, Molech. And they will literally kill their own children. And God's judgment comes at some point.
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