The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)
Introduction to the Patriarchs (with Jeff Cavins) (2025)
Mon, 06 Jan 2025
Congratulations, you've completed the Early World period! As we journey into the Patriarchs period, Jeff Cavins joins Fr. Mike to set the scene. They discuss the themes of Genesis 12-50, how it differs from the first 11 chapters of Genesis, and how it slowly reveals God's plan to redeem mankind. 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. This is Ascension. at the next page of the next stage, next time period in the Bible.
We had talked with Jeff Cavins earlier about the early world, and he gave us an incredible opportunity to see the context in which Genesis 1 through Genesis 11 were placed in Scripture, how that was Hebrew poetry. But in Genesis 12 through 50, we have what's called the patriarchs. It's the second time period in the Scripture when it comes to following the Great Adventure Bible timeline.
And it introduces us to a number of incredible characters. This is where we meet Abram and Sarai, whose names change. We meet Isaac. We meet Jacob. We meet their wives. We meet their kids. And we get to know, basically, the patriarchs, our father in faith, Abraham, as well as his kids, the beginning of the people of Israel we get to encounter. And so in order for us to get an opportunity—
to have some context for the patriarchs this time period. Once again, we are honored to have Jeff Cavins back.
Jeff Cavins is the individual who created the Great Adventure Bible Timeline, as well as the Great Adventure Bible Study, which again, as I've said many times, but I will not stop saying it because it was so important to me, so influential for me, that when I finally heard Jeff teaching about the Great Adventure Bible Timeline, so we have all these narrative books, these 14 narrative books, and understanding
these time periods and how the other books fit into the context, it changed everything for me because I went from knowing the stories to knowing the story. And I'm so grateful. That's one of the reasons why every time we hit these new time periods, what we're gonna do, we're gonna have Jeff back as he gives us some context and tells us what to look out for as we journey through the time period.
Right now, we are in the time period of the patriarchs. And once again, that means we're welcoming back Jeff Cavins. Jeff, thank you so much again to being here and giving us this direction.
Oh, thanks for allowing me to come and go for the ride. This is exciting. You know, just came through the early world and that is turquoise. And now we're going to enter a burgundy period. And burgundy reminds us of a blood, blood covenant, big thing that's going to happen in this period.
You know, as I've been listening to you over the last number of days, I'm just reminded of the encouragement of the Word of God and just want to extend encouragement to everybody that this is a story that you can get. And we're here to help you to navigate some of the time periods where it could be a little confusing, you know, if you don't have somebody guiding you. So that's good.
And it's good to have someone that can kind of help you. And this is chapter 12 of Genesis all the way to chapter 50. And we just came off of 11 chapters that really established kind of the early world. Now we're looking at the history that we're really familiar with, you know?
Yeah, because it changes now, right? It changes from that Hebrew poetry, from that prehistory into, like, these are characters that we know their names, we know their stories, their families, and it's God interacting with them in a really new way, right?
Right, yeah. And God has a plan to redeem mankind, which we saw the fall and original sin, they lost original justice back in the garden. And what we're gonna pick up on now in this period, which you're gonna be going through, I think it's even the day after Christmas, you're gonna be reading quite a bit. Big chunk, yeah.
During this patriarchal period, which is gonna cover Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. you're really going to get a look at how God works with mankind. And Abraham is going to become very important to us because how God deals with Abram is going to come into Paul's explanation in the New Testament, for example, in Galatians, dealing with faith and what it means to believe.
And so we pick up in chapter 12 with God speaking to a man by the name of Abram. As you said, his name is going to get changed. And he is in modern day Iraq. And he's in Ur of the Chaldeans. And God calls him. And you might notice in chapter 11, you get this so-and-so begot, so-and-so begot, so-and-so, which is a lot of people's favorite part of the book. Bible, I understand.
It's our favorite part. As you mentioned, it's the most marked up part of most people's Bibles.
Yeah, right. Well, you know what it's called, actually? It's a Hebrew tool called a toledot. A toledot is a literary tool that takes you from the wide angle down to narrow. In other words, the writer is forcing you to go from all of mankind to one guy, and that's Abram. And Abram's going to be key because he's going to walk with God, and God is going to make a people of Abram.
And so you pick up in chapter 12, and there are three key promises that God makes to Abram, which are going to be very important, three promises that are going to be very important in your reading plan. And I'm sure you'll bring them up when we reach that point. We start off in chapter 12. all the families of the earth shall bless themselves.
And so you have three promises to Abram at the beginning of this period, and that is land, a royal dynasty, going to make his name great, and worldwide blessing. Three major promises. But we have a major problem, and that is Abram doesn't have any kids. He doesn't have any kids. And it's just beautiful how God deals with this problem and gives him a son, Isaac.
And people are going to be reading that with you. And he ends up with Isaac as a son. But it's so interesting. In chapter 15, which you're going to be coming upon pretty quick in your reading.
Pretty quick, yeah. Yeah.
In chapter 15, we're going to see that Abram struggles with God. How do I know that you're going to give me these things? I don't even have a son, and God is going to make a covenant. with Abram. And you're going to read about it in chapter 15. I won't read it now, but this is a beautiful, beautiful situation where God makes a covenant with Abram.
And, and as a result of that, we're going to have Isaac and then Isaac and his wife, Rebecca have Jacob and Esau, or I should say Esau and Jacob. Right. And then after that, we're going to have through Jacob, the 12 sons, tribes of Israel through four different ladies. It's going to be Leah and Rachel, true, but it's also going to be their handmaids, Bilhah and Zilpah.
And you're going to end up with all of the tribes of Israel, the sons of Jacob, which eventually is going to lead them into Egypt, where things again go south. And they become the really servants of the Egyptians, and it doesn't end well for them.
You know, Jeff, one of the things you mentioned here is like, I'm so grateful for that, like the overview. Again, we have Abraham and Sarah. We have Isaac and Rebecca. We have Esau, you know, on the side there, and Jacob. And then the four, two wives, two handmaids.
And you also have some kind of, I remember I was talking with my sister about this because she's been studying the Great Adventure Bible timeline. She started a little while back, not too long back. And she's like, oh my gosh, I'm going through Genesis still. She got to the end and she said, I didn't realize.
how like messed up some stuff is or like, you know, how much there's family members, you know, whether hurting each other, murdering each other or incest. And like some of the things she's like, I didn't realize how much there was, how much brokenness, you know, to use one word to kind of sum up all this stuff.
Some of the people who will be journeying with us, this will be maybe one of the first times that they've actually heard They've heard the story, maybe the names, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, maybe the names of Sarah and Rebecca and Rachel and Leah. I don't know if they've all heard about kind of the weakness or the sins of these people. How do we navigate that?
Well, I think people are a little alarmed sometimes when they're reading the Bible and they hear these wild stories that people get into and they take offense like, oh, that shouldn't be in the Bible or I didn't expect that from the Bible. Well, just turn the Bible around and look at it like a mirror. I didn't expect that in your life either. And you didn't expect that in your life either.
You didn't... You know, you didn't think you would think like you're thinking. And so it really does paint a picture of the brokenness of humanity. And it speaks of the great patience and the loving kindness that God demonstrates in bringing us all back together into his family, which is going to culminate in Jesus. I would not be alarmed at all of these stories in the Bible.
I think anytime you read about sin, sure, it's alarming, but it really does echo where mankind is at today. And also the love of God and the great lengths he goes to save us and to bring us to himself. This period of the patriarchs is so rich. in the stories about God's faithfulness, about our brokenness.
You know, when you get to, you know, go from Abraham and Sarah, and then you get into Isaac and Rebecca, you will see Rebecca working with her son, Jacob, to try to right wrongs. And then Jacob fooling his brother And we wonder when he fools his brother Esau and he gets from him the blessing, but also the birthright.
Also the birthright, yeah.
When he gets that, you're thinking, now this isn't right. There's gotta be consequences to it. Right. And there are consequences. You keep reading.
Yeah.
Keep reading. And in Hebrew writing, Father, it's really interesting because in Hebrew writing, we want the story to be Jacob fooled Esau. We want punishment in the next chapter. Right. But the Hebrew writers don't do that. They don't tell you the results. They show you.
They show you.
And that's why you've got to read it carefully and start seeing patterns differently. develop. But the whole period in Genesis ends with Jacob giving blessings to all of his sons, and one tribe is going to rise above all of them as a tribe to pay attention to for the rest of the story.
Yeah, and it's so interesting that you're, I remember when you had revealed that to me, that yes, there's brokenness in all these stories because there's brokenness in our lives. Like that when it comes to Bible stories, again, sometimes our first introduction to the Bible is Bible stories for children. And so we don't necessarily get the like, wow, this is more about my life.
You mentioned at the very beginning of this, like you can get the Bible, like you can understand this. And I think we can really understand it when we realize This is not a book of tales. This is not a Hallmark movie. This is real life.
And also what you had revealed to me that just pay attention because more often scriptures will show you the consequences of an action or the right or wrongness of an action more quickly than they'll tell you specifically when it comes to some of these early narrative books where they're talking about the patriarchs and talking about some of the actions of those who are our fathers and mothers in the faith.
Yeah, and another thing to pay attention to is how the church reads Scripture. You know, we know that there are three different levels that we need to pay attention to when you're reading it. Number one is you need to read this, all of this, the patriarchs in Genesis, knowing that Christ fulfills all of this. He fulfills all of it. And from time to time, that will become evident.
But second of all, We need to read it in light of what does this mean to me? Do I see myself in this story? Am I Jacob? Right. Or am I Esau?
Am I the deceiver?
Yeah, right. And so you read it knowing that this relates to my life as well. And the third is the future, heaven. How does this find fulfillment eventually in heaven? And those are the three things. things that we pay attention to as Catholics when we read the Bible, but it is a love letter written to you where God is revealing his heart and his plan to you.
And don't be discouraged if you don't get it all right now. There was a very famous word from one of the saints who said that reading the Bible is like drinking from a drinking fountain. Do you remember that one?
Yeah, I do. It's St. Ephraim the Syrian, I think it was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can finish it. It's great. Drinking from a fountain where you shouldn't be discouraged by the fact that you can't drain the spring, you can't drain the fountain, but be encouraged by the fact that every time you return to it, there's more and more and more.
Yeah, yeah. You don't go to a drinking fountain and start crying saying, look at all of that went on the ground. Okay. be happy with what you got.
Exactly. I drank it all. And to recognize that I'll take in a little bit, whatever I can take in. And that's the thing that I've learned over the course of these years too, is I take in what I can, and then I'm not going to be overly bothered with what I can't take in. That's one of the reasons why actually, kind of confession, why I really like the audio versions of books.
And actually one of the reasons we're doing the podcast is is that sometimes I know for myself that when I'm reading with my eyes, I can get stuck. I'm like, wait, what does this mean? What exactly is this? And if I just kept on reading, I would get a bigger picture of it.
I would start understanding because the text itself would tell me things, as well as the fact that just because, again, I can't mine all of the gold out of the scriptures in one reading doesn't mean I can't go back. And I can always keep coming back. And that's what it sounds like you're saying when it comes to the whole Bible, but especially here, we're getting these stories of the patriarchs.
Well, this period is going to be an exciting period, and I know that it's going to be fun to go through it with you. It's really the story of Abraham, and now we are following the seed line all the way from Eve We're gonna follow that line all the way to Jesus. And so one of the ways we navigate through this complex Bible is we stay on task.
We are following the seed line that was introduced with Adam and Eve. And you can read about these genealogies in Matthew and Luke. And so it's not just willy-nilly, there's actually a prescribed way of telling this entire story. So we've got Abram, and that great covenant that God makes with Abram is going to be bedrock for the rest of the entire Bible.
We're gonna be looking for when do they get land? When is there a royal kingdom established? When is worldwide blessing available to the world? And so that acts as a foundation for us to read going forward. But then who can forget the great stories of Isaac, and Jacob, and then the longest portion of Genesis goes to Joseph.
And just a key, when you get to that point, when you get to that point, remember, it's not just about Joseph. There's one other character that you're gonna be getting into. I won't let the cat out of the bag. But you're gonna be talking about that, and it's going to end with all the blessings to these sons, which are really, really important. And they end in Egypt.
And then there's going to be a 400-year break after that. And then you're going to be picking up with Exodus and moving on. So we're right on schedule here.
This is so good. And I'm so grateful for you highlighting, well, everything you've highlighted. But here's the promises to Abraham. And they don't die with him. They don't die with his son. They don't die with his grandson. But as you said, they're fulfilled in a remarkable way that actually has something to do with you and with me right now. And to see like this was where...
God promised our great, great, great, great, great, you know, ancestor in, because we're, you know, spiritually, we're grafted onto the tree that be able to say like, that's remarkable. And we get to be brought into this. Actually, that fulfillment of the worldwide blessing is one of the reasons why you and I have access to the scripture right now.
I have access to the gift of faith and what a gift, what an incredible gift. Jeff, is there any one last thing that you would say, okay, for context, as you walk through the age of the patriarchs, period of the patriarchs, keep this in mind?
Yeah, I think it's faith, you know, and what is faith and trusting in God. This idea of faith is not simply believism. You know, God did not say to Abram, do you just believe what I'm telling you? Right. But faith, to quote Pope Benedict, faith is really divided into two things. One is a mental acknowledgement.
Abram says, yes, I believe that God is calling me to leave this land and go to a new land, a promised land. That's why we call it the promised land. It was promised to Abram and his descendants. But the second aspect of that, the first is faith. Mental assent, yes, I concur, I believe. The second is a personal entrusting of yourself to God.
Now, as we continue to read in the Patriarchs and beyond, you're going to encounter people who made mental assent, but they never entrusted themselves. And that's where the story gets really interesting. But what we see in Abram is he not only believed God, But it was counted for him as righteousness because he stepped out and he walked in it. He showed that he trusted God.
And so there's a remarkable demonstration here of what it means to walk with God, with Abram. And you can kind of measure Isaac and Jacob and beyond with the walk that Abraham had with God.
Yeah, that's so good. Thank you for that. And especially, we get to see Abram's faith grow, Abram's faith get tested. And so at that sense of like, so when we look at our own lives and realize, okay, so that when it comes to faith, like it gets it gets to grow, it doesn't just have to be static. And so with a Wow.
I'm so grateful, Jeff, once again, not only for the Great Adventure Bible timeline as a gift from the Lord through you, I really believe, to us, but also for your time to be able to give us a context as we march through these next number of days, 20 or so days of going through the age of the patriarchs, keeping in mind that God is working with real people. It's got a mirror.
Scripture gets to be a mirror in this way. And we get to see through the lens of faith. Mm-hmm.
uh the actions the decisions and the real lives of these people who are our fathers in faith so thank you once again well i'm finding it so exciting so far just you know just to listen yes and to uh you know scriptures as faith comes by hearing in hearing by the word of god and as you're reading scripture father and i'm listening that word is going deep into my heart and and god is having his way
with my heart via his word. And so you're a gift in that you're lending your voice to God to speak, but then we also get some great commentary. So I appreciate it. It's just a wonderful opportunity.
Thank you so much. Awesome. So if you all want to continue following us, following this podcast, following this journey, and you want to see it in front of you, sometimes they have the reading plan in front of you is like having a map. You can kind of see like, here's where we've been, here's where we are, and here's where we're going. That can be really, really helpful.
So if you want that, you can download that Bible in a Year reading plan by going to ascensionpress.com slash Bible in a Year. You also can sign up for the email list by texting the word Catholic Bible to the number 33777. And finally, please subscribe. If you haven't yet subscribed to the podcast, you can at any given moment.
But when you do, one of the things that you're doing is you are giving yourself an opportunity to every time that one of these episodes drops, it drops into your phone or wherever you get your podcasts. So please do that. Once again, we are always praying for you as you're journeying through this scripture, journeying through the Bible. I'm praying for you.
My invitation is that you pray for each other because I have the sense that as we journey through the early world already and we're going into the patriarchs and beyond. That just like during Egypt and the Exodus and desert wanderings, they had each other. Just like in the early church, they had each other. Right now, I think to be able to sustain this journey, we need to have each other.
So please keep praying for our fellow travelers as we are brought through the age of the early world, through the patriarchs and beyond to the ultimately to the messianic fulfillment of all of God's promises. Once again, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and I cannot wait to continue to join you on this journey, and God bless.