Hi, I'm 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 day two, so let's get started. Today, we'll be reading Genesis Chapter Three and Genesis Chapter Four. After the great news of creation or the good news of creation, what happened then? How did things get so terribly messed up? We'll also be reading from the Book of Psalms, Psalm 104. The Bible that I'm reading from today and all this year is the RSVCE, the revised standard version, Catholic edition. I'm using the Great Adventure Bible from Ascension. If you are interested in following along, not just listening along, but reading along, you can download your Catholic Bible and your reading plan by visiting ascensionpress. Com/bibleinayear. Again, ascensionpress. Com/bibleinnear to get the reading plan and to get these daily updates, just subscribe in your podcast app and we will keep popping up every single day for the next 365 days so you do not miss a day.

You can also sign up for our email list by texting the word Catholic Bible to 33777. That's all one word, Catholic Bible to 33777. Let's get started. Genesis three and four.

Now, the serpent was more subtle than any other wild creature that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, Did God say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but God said you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it lest you die. But the serpent said to the woman, You will not die, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. And she also gave some to her husband and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sowed fig leaves together and made themselves apron. They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.

The man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, Where are you? He said, I heard the sound of you in the garden to now is afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. He said, Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree, which I commanded you not to eat? The man said, The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree and I ate. Then the Lord God said to the woman, What is this that you've done? The woman said, The serpent begiled me and I ate. The Lord God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, cursed are you above all cattle and above all wild animals. Upon your belly, you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put edmonty between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. To the woman, he said, I will greatly multiply your pain and childbearing.

In pain, you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you. And to Adam, he said, Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and eaten of the tree of which I have commanded you, you shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground because of you. In toil, you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles, it shall bring forth to you, and you shall eat the plants of the field. In the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. You are dust, and to dust you shall return. The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all the living. And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them. And the Lord God said, 'Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, and now lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever, therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden to tilt the ground from which he was taken.

He drove out the man, and at the east of the Garden of Eden, he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword which turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. Now, Adam knew his.

Wife, Eve.

And she conceived and bore Cain saying, I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord. Again, she bore his brother Abel. Now, Abel was a keeper of the sheep and Cain a tiller of the ground. In the course of time, Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel brought some of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. The Lord had regard for Abel in his offering, but for Cain and his offering, he had no regard. Cain was very angry and his countenance fell. The Lord said to Cain, Why are you angry and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must master it. Cain said to Abel, his brother, Let us go out to the field. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, Where is Abel, your brother? He said, I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper? And the Lord said, What have you done?

The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground, and now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you till the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength. You shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth. Cain said to the Lord, My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, you have driven me this day away from the ground, and from your face I shall be hidden. I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will slay me. Then the Lord said to him, Not so. If anyone slays Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord put a mark on Cain, lest anyone who came upon him should kill him. Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod, east of Eden. Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. And he built a city and called the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch. To Enoch was born, Irad. And Irad was the father of Mahujahal.

And Mahujahal, the father of Mathushahal. And Mathushahal, the father of Lamek. And Lamek took two wives. The name of one was.

Adda and.

The name of the other Zillah. Adda bore Jebel. He was the father of those who dwell in tents and have cattle. His brother's name was Jubal, and he was the father of all who play the lyre and pipe. Zillah bore Tubelcain. He was the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron. Sister of Tubel Cain was Naama. Lemek said to his wives, Adah and Zillah, hear my voice. You wives of Lemek, hearkened to what I say. I have slain a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain is avenged sevenfold, truly, Lemek 77fold. Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and called his name Seth. For, she said, God has appointed for me another child instead of Abel, for Cain slew him. To Seth also, a son was born, and he called his name Enos. At that time, men began to call upon the name of the Lord. Psalm 104: God the creator and provider.

Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord, my God, you are very great. You are clothed with honor and Majesty, who cover yourself with light as with a garment, who have stretched out the heavens like a tent, who have laid the beams of your chambers on the waters, who make the clouds your chariot, who ride on the wings of the wind, who make the winds your messengers, fire and flame your ministers. You set the earth on its foundations so that it should never be shaken. You covered it with the deep as with a garment. The waters stood above the mountains. At your rebuke, they fled. At the sound of your thunder, they took to flight. The mountains rose. The valleys sank down to the place which you appointed for them. You set a bound which should not pass so that they might not again cover the earth. You make springs gush forth in the valleys. They flow between the hills. They give drink to every beast of the field. The wild donkeys quench their thirst. By them, the birds of the air have their habitatione. They sing among the branches. From your lofty abode, you water the mountains.

The earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work. You cause the grass to grow for the cattle and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth fruit from the earth and wine to gladen the heart of men, oil to make his face shine, and bread to strengthen man's heart. The trees of the Lord are watered abundantly, the cedars of Lebanon, which he planted. In them, the birds build their nests. The stork has her home in the fur trees. The high mountains are for the wild goats. The rocks are a.

Refuge for the badgers.

You have made the moon to mark the seasons. The sun knows it's time for setting. You make darkness and it is night when all the beasts of the forest creep forth. The young lions roar for their prey, seeking their food from God. When the sun rises, they get them away and lie down in their dens. Man goes forth to his work and to his labor until the evening. O Lord, how manifold are your works? In wisdom you have made them all. The earth is full of.

Your creatures.

Yonder is the sea, great and wide, which teams with things innumerable, living things both great and small. There go the ships and Leviathan, which you formed to sport in it. These all look to you to give them their food in due season. When you give it to them, they gather it up. When you open your hand, they are filled with good things. When you hide your face, they are dismayed. When you take away their spirit, they die and return to the dust. When you send forth your spirit, they are created and you renew the face of the earth. May the glory of the Lord endure forever. May the Lord rejoice in his works who look upon the earth and it trembles, who touches the mountains and they smoke. I will sing to the Lord as long as I live. I will sing praise to my God while I have being. May my meditation be pleasing to him, for I rejoice in the Lord. Let sinners be consumed from the earth and let the wicked be no more. Bless the Lord, O my soul. Praise the Lord.

Father in heaven, we give you thanks and praise. We give you glory and we love you. Thank you for sharing your word with us and thank you for giving us this clear vision of how you had created this world and how we had allowed sin to enter into it. Thank you for not abandoning us in the midst of our woundedness, but always following us into the wilderness, following us into the darkness so that you can be our light. Thank you, Father. We give you praise in Jesus' name, Amen. Gosh, things messed up pretty quickly. We went from yesterday where we had this incredible two stories of creation and the way in which God had not just made this macro universe, but also the way in which God had made even the smallest detail of care for the man and for the woman, of not only calling them to be with each other and calling them to enter into leisure and labor and love, but also his divine intimacy with them. And it's remarkable. So what do we got here? In Genesis 3, we have this incredible story. When I say incredible, I don't mean good, incredible.

I mean terrible, horrible, but powerful. The temptation of Eve. I'm sure you maybe have heard some of this because there's so much to say about Genesis 3 and Chapter 4. But the first thing we can note is that term, that word that's used to describe Satan, it's the term that in other parts of the Bible, it means Leviathan or Sea Monster or Dragon. It's a fearsome creature. It's not just a simple guard or snake. Remember, Jeff Cavens, who had created the Great Adventian Bible timeline, pointed this out. Part of that is because it reveals the fact that this serpent is powerful, and this serpent is dangerous. Eve would know that this serpent would be dangerous in that moment as well. Yet he doesn't overtly challenge... Well, we'd say this, he doesn't overtly challenge God's existence. He doesn't even overtly challenge God's authority to declare the tree to be off limits. But he does challenge God's trustworthiness. When he says, Did God really say? And she says, Yeah, he said we could eat of any of the trees or even touch the fruit of the tree. We can eat of any of the fruit of any of the trees except for this one, a tree of good and evil, and we can't even touch it, which is actually, you think, That's not true.

He never said you could not touch it, although that would be a near occasion of sin unless we die. Then here is Satan, this Leviathan sea monster who says, You'll certainly not die. God knows full well that if you eat of this, you'll be like him. The implication is, and he doesn't want you to be like him. Again, it's not a challenge of God's authority. It's not a challenge of God's existence. It's a challenge of God's trustworthiness. It's a challenge of, will you belong to Him? Or will you have to take your life into your own hands? This is the contest. This is the test for one of us. So often we can ask the question, God, why don't you reveal yourself more? Why don't you just show yourself to us? And we would believe in you. The truth of the matter is God doesn't simply want us to believe in Him. That's not the point. The point is not to believe in Him. The point is to belong to Him. God could. He could reveal His goodness and His beauty and His power. He could reveal His existence. We would still have to have the same exact decision, the same exact challenge, or I guess, essentially test, we might say it—that Eve, and I guess subsequently Adam, had gone through, which is not.

Do you believe in God? The question is, do you belong to Him? Will you obey him because you know that he loves you? This is the thing, up to this point, all Adam and Eve had ever known is that God loved them. The first challenge here of the serpent is he doesn't actually love you. Because if he loved you, he would give you, he would allow you to eat this fruit. Think about how scripture describes this. The woman saw that the tree was good for food, delight to the eyes, and the tree was to be desired to make one wise. I mean, those are all good things. That's often what we do, isn't it? We look at sin and we think, Well, that's silly. That's ridiculous that the Church says that's not allowed, or that the Bible says that we ought not to do this or that thing, because look, it actually works. It seems like it would be a good idea. Yet when any decision, any option, any choice goes against God's will, we know that we're making the decision like I don't belong to him anymore. So the scripture says that their eyes, both of them were open and they were naked and they sowed pig leaves together and made themselves apron.

Another translation said, made loin cloths for themselves. Then what happens is then God comes along. Remember, this is the God who is so intimate with them. In the cool of the evening, we used to walk with him, and he calls out, Where are you? Adam responds, I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid myself. Now, the very next line, I've heard it said, and I'll say it again, the way in which we hear the very next line tells us everything that we need to know about our vision of God. The very next line, God's next line, how we hear it, the words are simple. The words are, Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? If we hear that, sometimes we can hear that is God's anger. We hear God's anger, his wrath in a voice that's like, Who told you that you were naked? Kind of a thing. He's just so mad. Or we could hear the true heart of the Father who would say, Who told you that you.

Were naked?

Have you eaten of the tree of which I've commanded you not to eat? What we hear is the the heartbreak of the Father in his voice because he knows the plan he had for his children, and that planned for his children was that he would belong to them and they would belong to him and they would be able to actually live their lives in peace and in joy and in the love of his presence. In this moment, the story reveals that they don't get to, they have a different path they have to follow. That different path is then spelled out where we hear the curses. Now, actually, it's singular. These are not curses. This is the one curse. Only the serpent gets cursed, right? The next two things, what God says to Adam and what God says to Eve are not, strictly speaking, curses. They're more remedies. Yeah, they're painful. Absolutely painful. Here is pain and childbearing and broken relationships. Here is Adam who basically has to go to work at his horrible job every day and commute back and forth, living by the sweat of his brow. But that is not meant to be a curse.

In fact, the scripture does not call it a curse. It's the remedy. Because why? Because Adam and Eve failed to choose love. They're made for love. Remember, they're made for labor, leisure, and love. They failed to choose love. Love always involves sacrifice. Now, for Eve to love, for the woman to love, she will bring forth life in pain and learn that love involves sacrifice. For Adam to care for his wife and to care for his family, he will have to bring forth fruit of the earth in toil and sweat amongst thorns and thistles. He will have to learn that to love requires sacrifice. Yet here is this key thing. How do we know that this is true? How do we know this is not God? Just bringing the smackdown on Adam and Eve is because at the end, after God drives out the man and the woman out of the Garden of Eden, he places the chair of him, the flaming sword, to guard the way to the tree of life. Well, A, why does he guard the tree of life? My gosh, there's so much to say about this. Why does God guard the tree of life?

Because if they eat of the tree of life, they'll never die. Well, God doesn't want them to never die? No, not like this. God doesn't want them to live in this brokenness forever. Maybe that their destiny originally was to be created and live in wholeness and holiness and to live forever in that wholeness and holiness. But since they're broken, God's saying, No, stay away from the tree of life because I don't want you to live in this brokenness for eternity. I will now allow you to live in this world in such a way that you will end up dying so that you can be raised up. That's ultimately the key for this. But how do we know this? How do we know that God is still caring for His people? Because it says in Chapter Three, verse 21, And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them. One of the things that is here's God continuing to provide, continuing to care for the man and the woman. Yes, they have rebuilt against him. Yes, they cannot any longer live in the Garden of Eden, but here is God still caring for them.

How does He clothe them? Garments of skins, leather garments, which means something had to die for God to be able to love Adam and Eve. Again, this profound reality, the connection between love and sacrifice, love and caring for another. Of course, we have then Genesis Chapter 4. I know there's been so much said already about Genesis Chapter 3, but things escalate quickly. Humanity goes from eating a piece of fruit to brother killing brother. We wonder what is this? Why does... We have this story of Cain and Abel. We have Cain offering a sacrifice and Abel offering a sacrifice. It says that the Lord God accepted the offering of Abel. But for Cain and his offering, he had no regard. Cain was very angry, angry, and his countenance fell. We asked the question, Well, why? Why do God accept Abel's offering and didn't accept Cain's offering? Ultimately, we don't know. But one of the thoughts would be this, is that the nature of Abel's offering was he had brought out the first fruits of the flock. And the nature of Cain's offering is that he just gave God whatever. Abel says he brought some of the firstlings of his flock.

But for Cain, he in offering of fruit from the ground. Not necessarily first fruits. Because of that, we can look at ourselves and say, How am I offering God? What am I offering God? Do I give God the best or do I just give God whatever's left? Because one offering is acceptable and gives glory to God, and the other offering might in some ways be meaningless, not because it's meaningless to God per se, but because it was meaningless to us. We just gave God whatever was left. We can do this when it comes to our prayer. Do I give God the first fruit? Do I give God the first moment of my day? That doesn't even have to be the first chronological moment of the day. It can be, do I first put that rock of, I will pray at this time in my calendar? It doesn't get moved. That's the first pebble, first rock that goes into my daily calendar. That's giving God our first fruits. There's a challenge here because Cain was so angry with his brother. But God is saying, he says this, this is a powerful word. He says, If you do well, will you not be accepted?

And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must master it. That even when we are broken, even when we are angry, even when we are tempted, we do not have to sin. God is declaring that we do not have to sin. You can be the master of the evil that is within us. You can be the master of the evil that's within you. One of the things that we recognize right now is, okay, gosh, Lord, you created this world very good, and humanity has sinned and turned against you. We've not trusted you. We might believe in you, but so often we don't belong to you, but you continue to care for us. Now, as an act of love, love always involves sacrifice. I will now, in order to love you, I have to sacrifice something. And each day, what that means is I have to sacrifice some of my time to spend with you, to be in prayer. I want to let that time that I sacrificed to you be not whatever's left, but I want that time to be the best, my first fruits.

Anyways, it's so good to be starting this journey with you. It's so good to be underway and cracking open the Bible. I cannot wait to be with you again tomorrow as we continue moving forward in this early world period of Genesis and just continue to follow this incredible story that is part of your story and my story. My name is Father Mike. God bless.

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