The Book of Mosiah (Chapters 1-3)
Again, I write this hoping it works as a study guide to read along with the scriptures. No guarantees that it will entertain all by itself haha
Prologue: Words of Mormon 1:12-18
Where we first learn about King Benjamin
Book of Mosiah
Chapter 1Verse 3. What would my life be like without the scriptures? Compare King Mosiah's people to the people they found at Zarahemla
V4 Scriptures are here to keep God's commandments always before our eyes.
When you go to an institute class, Sunday school, or even when reading this blog, I hope you write your thoughts in your own set of scriptures. You will return to that page again, and will keep that impression fresh, or maybe by that time your life will be so different that it will mean something entirely new. You will not however, see that white board that your institute teacher wrote everything on, and I doubt you will read this blog again. Keep your records with you.
V2-7, he writes the hopes he has for his sons.
V11, His hope for his people is that they will become a covenant people.
Note: King Benjamin is speaking to people comprised of those who came with Mosiah from the land of Nephi (life long members in today's world) and those that were native to Zarahemla (modern day converts). To see what Benjamin teaches this mixed congregation is interesting.
Chapter 2
V6 Sometimes we go through physical preparation to be spiritual prepared. These people set up their tents facing towards the temple. They built a tower where Benjamin could speak from. Scribes were at the ready to deliver the message.
They were also spiritually prepared by offering burnt sacrifices. Benjamin was spiritually prepared (Mosiah 3:4) because had been praying, asking God if he could deliver this message to the people.
Side note on Mosiah3:4... Interesting that he would ask God if he could share this message, right? You would think, well duh of course God wants you to share it. But if you've ever heard someone speak about an experience of a friend, they probably said they were sharing that experience with permission. Well, these truths are God's truths… Maybe asking to share them, will show God how much we value them. And maybe the message will be delivered with even more power and clarity.
The angel in Ch3 V4 said the lord has heard your prayers, and said that you may rejoice, and declare your message to your people, that they may also rejoice.
Okay, backup to Chapter 2, Verse 9,
Benjamin begins his speech.
V9 "..I have not commanded you to come up and trifle with these words…"Basically, Benjamin is going to get right to the point. He's not going to spend 5 minutes talking about the story of how the bishop asked him to speak, or how this message was really more for him than for us, or how he is nervous etc. (if that is you… hint, hint..)
He asks us to:
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Before really get into King Benjamin's message, fast forward to Mosiah 4:2 real quick where we can see the result that this message had on his people.
- Open our ears
- Open our hearts
- Open our minds
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Before really get into King Benjamin's message, fast forward to Mosiah 4:2 real quick where we can see the result that this message had on his people.
- "they viewed themselves.. Even less than the dust."
- They wished that their "hearts may be purified".
- And they "believed in Jesus Christ".
- Having humility to recognize where we are (recognize our weakness and dependency on God)
- Have righteous desires, recognizing what we what to become instead (hearts may be purified)
- Have faith that only in Jesus Christ can those desires could be achieved. (believe in Jesus Christ, & believe that he will bridge the gap between who we are and who we want to become. )
- We recognize our hunger
- We want food
- We know the source of that food
We don't see the value of the atonement, till we grapple with our fallen state.
So let's get to the meat of this…
- How does Benjamin establish humility in his listeners?
- How does he shift their desire towards true righteousness?
- What does he teach them of Jesus, to center their faith in Him?
Ultimately, how do we bridge the gap between who we are now and who we want to become?
Let's find out..
Humility
If there were a defining trait of evangelical Christians, I would say it is humility. It is a sense of our own fallenness, where we see the need for a savior. This dependence on God is essential for conversion.King Benjamin begins speaking of humility in Chapter 2:20.
20 I say unto you, my brethren, that if you should render all the thanks and praise which your whole soul has power to possess, to that God who has created you, and has kept and preserved you, and has caused that ye should rejoice, and has granted that ye should live in peace one with another—
21 I say unto you that if ye should serve him who has created you from the beginning, and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another—I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants.
We see this distinction between all of the things we might be able to do for God, and all that God has already done for us. I love the imagery, lending you breath… we don't even own our own air. Imagine trying to apply for a loan every time we need a breath of air.
There's folk story of a man who tries to show his independence from God - so he holds his breath.. He begins to turn blue and thinks for a second he is winning.. Eventually he passes out.. And when he hits the ground, he exhales, again finding himself depending on God for air.
(jk I just made that story up, but it sounds like old folklore right??)
It seems like Benjamin is painting this picture of all the reasons why we are indebted to God, and all the things we can do for Him. So here is our ledger:
Now this left side can go on and on. But the basic idea, is we are deep in the red, right? Even if we could give all the thanks, all the praise, and serve him with our "whole souls", we would be unprofitable servants. But there's something in our nature that hates being in debt. So if we read in verse 22, it seems like there is one more thing we can add to our credits side.
"all that he requires of you is to keep his commandments"
So you might read this and think, "that's it! If I can obey every commandment, I will get out of debt and no longer be an unprofitable servant. And if we're no longer unprofitable servants… we're profitable ones. And who's getting that profit? God. Who does he owe it to? Us. So what does he give us? Salvation, because he owes it to us, we've earned it. We have worked and obeyed until god gives it to us."
So let's add one big fat OBEY on the credits side.
(jk I just made that story up, but it sounds like old folklore right??)
It seems like Benjamin is painting this picture of all the reasons why we are indebted to God, and all the things we can do for Him. So here is our ledger:
|
Debits
|
Credits
|
|
Creation
Keeping
Preservation
Joy
Peace
Agency
Support
Life
Breath
|
Thanks
Praise
Service
|
"all that he requires of you is to keep his commandments"
So you might read this and think, "that's it! If I can obey every commandment, I will get out of debt and no longer be an unprofitable servant. And if we're no longer unprofitable servants… we're profitable ones. And who's getting that profit? God. Who does he owe it to? Us. So what does he give us? Salvation, because he owes it to us, we've earned it. We have worked and obeyed until god gives it to us."
So let's add one big fat OBEY on the credits side.
|
Debits
|
Credits
|
|
Creation
Keeping
Preservation
Joy
Peace
Agency
Support
Life
Breath
|
Thanks
Praise
Service
OBEY
|
So the question becomes: Is salvation a gift of grace or wage of works??
It can't be both.
Back in 2nd Nephi 2:4, he says salvation is free. So how can you give something for free, and still require something of your recipient? How can God give salvation freely, and yet require us to keep his commandments??
The answer comes in Mosiah 2:23-24.
23 And now, in the first place, he hath created you, and granted unto you your lives, for which ye are indebted unto him.
24 And secondly, he doth require that ye should do as he hath commanded you; for which if ye do, he doth immediately bless you; and therefore he hath paid you. And ye are still indebted unto him, and are, and will be, forever and ever; therefore, of what have ye to boast?
Pay attention to those two phrases, "in the first place", and "Secondly". In God's eyes, there is not one ledger, but two.
The first ledger:
This is where Salvation fits in. There's really not much we can do to settle this score. Ya in verse 20-21 he says we can give thanks and praise him, but that doesn't pay off the debt. You can not repay someone for creating you, and you can never give enough to equal what Christ gave for your salvation. This ledger is a gift. Free of charge, it is yours.
Second ledger:
24 And secondly, he doth require that ye should do as he hath commanded you; for which if ye do, he doth immediately bless you; and therefore he hath paid you. And ye are still indebted unto him, and are, and will be, forever and ever; therefore, of what have ye to boast?
Pay attention to those two phrases, "in the first place", and "Secondly". In God's eyes, there is not one ledger, but two.
The first ledger:
|
Debits
|
Credits
|
|
Creation
Keeping
Preservation
Joy
Peace
Agency
Support
Life
Breath
Salvation
|
-
|
Second ledger:
|
Debits
|
Credits
|
|
Blessings
|
Obedience
& Service
|
In V22, "if ye do keep his commandments he doth bless you and prosper you"
Try as you might to pay off debts from the first ledger with credits from another ledger, but God just doesn't work that way. If you were somehow able to tell God to withhold all blessings, and apply them to the Creation & Salvation debt, it would turn what He intended to be a gift into a wage. It would emphasize your labor, instead of His love.
So let's keep these two ledgers separate.
The first ledger, we will always and eternally be in His debt.
The second, we are immediately blessed, paid in full, and then some. Therefore He will never be in our debt.
This is how grace and works coincide together.
As a missionary entering the MTC, you get asked a lot why you decided to serve a mission. A lot of us said that we wanted to pay back God in some way for all that he has blessed us with. And yet, we all came home deeper in debt than when we started. And that's exactly how God prefers it to be.
Continuing in Verse 25-26:
25 And now I ask, can ye say aught of yourselves? I answer you, Nay. Ye cannot say that ye are even as much as the dust of the earth; yet ye were created of the dust of the earth; but behold, it belongeth to him who created you.
26 And I, even I, whom ye call your king, am no better than ye yourselves are; for I am also of the dust. And ye behold that I am old, and am about to yield up this mortal frame to its mother earth.
Remember, Benjamin's goal in this speech is to bridge the gap between who we are and who we want to become. And the process for that is humility, righteous desires, and faith. We are still in the humility part, and King Benjamin hits it home with this dust analogy.
Truth is we are not even as obedient as the dust of the earth. Have you ever seen a stubborn dust particle that just refused to move when the wind blew? Yet we are stubborn and refuse to move or act when asked to.
To sum up this first section, King Benjamin's first goal in his talk was to plant this seed of humility in us. To help us recognize the dependence we have on God and his mercy. We cannot and never will be able to pay him back. But, rejoice in your status as an unprofitable servant.. It is everything God intended you to be :)
_________________________________________________________________________________
When considering how this is done, I just straight up asked google "educate your desires". I expected several psychology sites, but laughed a little when almost every site was directed to an LDS talk on educating desires. So here are some of my favorite things I found:
“education … of our desires is one of far-reaching importance to our happiness in life.” - Joseph Smith
“For me, a desire is a conscious, private longing for which each person is responsible.. It is a powerful hope, a quiet, soul-felt anticipation originating from that sovereign territory we each possess. We are all influenced by our families [and] our culture, and yet I believe there is a place inside of us that we uniquely and individually control and create. These desires are being constructed or developed, fortified or weakened constantly, whether they are righteous or unrighteous.” - Neil L. Anderson
"How do we educate our desires? We begin, I suppose, with our feelings. The desires of our hearts are deep-seated and fundamental. But our feelings are closer to the surface and easier for us to identify and influence… We should pray to have the right kind of feelings about our experiences—positive or negative—and about the people we knew. If our feelings were right, we would be more likely to take right actions and to act for the right reasons" - Dallin H. Oaks
"What we insistently desire, over time, is what we will eventually become and what we will receive in eternity" - Neal A. Maxwell
"Educating and training our desires clearly requires understanding the truths of the gospel" - Brigham Young
In Verse 17 (Ch2), Benjamin teaches us that we "may learn wisdom; that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God." He connects the first two great commandments in this verse; love God, and love your neighbor. Here is one way to visualize that connection:
It is service and sacrifice that passes between us and our neighbor. It is humility and gratitude that passes between us and God. As our actions towards others and our attitudes towards God improve, our discipleship grows, and with it, our righteous desires.
V 36-37. Just as we can feed our righteous desires with acts of service and a humble attitude, we can feed unrighteous desires. "Choose ye this day whom ye will serve." Joshua 24:15
V38. Satan too has his own ledger, and we can certainly rack up the credits side with unrighteous desires and actions, but he has nothing to pay us with. All he has to offer is found in verse 38.
Okay this these last few verses sound terrible right? But if you pay attention to the language used, God isn't sending anyone to hell or to an unquenchable fire. It's just that if we spend our whole life fueling unrighteous desires, one day the time will come when we will see clearly the demands of divine justice, and it will wake up our soul. The sense of guilt, pain and anguish we would feel is LIKE an unquenchable fire. We are doing the damage to ourselves. We would be the ones to shrink in shame, not God sending us to the flames.
"A sinner has his own mind and his own mind damns him. He is damned by mortification and is his own condemner and tormenter… I have no fear of hell fire, that doesn't exist, but the torment and disappointment of the mind of man is as exquisite as a lake burning with fire and brimstone." - Joseph Smith
V41. The chapter ends describing the hap state of those who have reconciled, or retrained, their desires and their will to be in line with God's.
So to end King Benjamin's segment on righteous desires, he wants us to see clearly the consequences of our desires and actions. If we can accomplish that, we can choose which desires to feed and fuel. "With increased vision, comes increased motivation."
_________________________________________________________________________________
Queue Mosiah Chapter 3
V5-11. Benjamin speaks of the miracles that Christ would perform, and the pains that he would suffer. And then he begins to speak of the atonement.
V12. "For salvation cometh to none such except it be through repentance and faith on the Lord Jesus Christ".
V15. Only through His blood can we be saved. Anything else independent of that, is to no avail.
Everything Benjamin has said so far has led up to these three verses. Verse 17, 18, 19.
When we come to truly believe that there is no other name whereby salvation can come, but only in and through the name of Christ and his atoning blood, then we will be able to put off the natural man, and become a saint.
I could write for a few more hours on that subject, but as to not scare off any more readers for the length of this blog, we'll just sum it up like so… the atonement makes bad men good, and good men better.
Kind of sad that my Faith In Jesus Christ section ended up being the shortest… I just ran out of steam haha.
Read this if you want to dive deeper into that: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/2012/04/the-atonement-and-the-journey-of-mortality?lang=eng
This is evangelicalism at its best. This is the restored gospel at it's finest. Amazing what a little bit of humility, desires directed in the right way, and some faith can do. I hope you can see the change it can make in you as I have seen it have in me.
All the love,
Righteous Desires
If that sense of absolute dependence upon the mercy and grace of God has sunk in... I think we are ready to shift from the first requirement, humility, to the second, righteous desires.When considering how this is done, I just straight up asked google "educate your desires". I expected several psychology sites, but laughed a little when almost every site was directed to an LDS talk on educating desires. So here are some of my favorite things I found:
“education … of our desires is one of far-reaching importance to our happiness in life.” - Joseph Smith
“For me, a desire is a conscious, private longing for which each person is responsible.. It is a powerful hope, a quiet, soul-felt anticipation originating from that sovereign territory we each possess. We are all influenced by our families [and] our culture, and yet I believe there is a place inside of us that we uniquely and individually control and create. These desires are being constructed or developed, fortified or weakened constantly, whether they are righteous or unrighteous.” - Neil L. Anderson
"How do we educate our desires? We begin, I suppose, with our feelings. The desires of our hearts are deep-seated and fundamental. But our feelings are closer to the surface and easier for us to identify and influence… We should pray to have the right kind of feelings about our experiences—positive or negative—and about the people we knew. If our feelings were right, we would be more likely to take right actions and to act for the right reasons" - Dallin H. Oaks
"What we insistently desire, over time, is what we will eventually become and what we will receive in eternity" - Neal A. Maxwell
"Educating and training our desires clearly requires understanding the truths of the gospel" - Brigham Young
In Verse 17 (Ch2), Benjamin teaches us that we "may learn wisdom; that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God." He connects the first two great commandments in this verse; love God, and love your neighbor. Here is one way to visualize that connection:
It is service and sacrifice that passes between us and our neighbor. It is humility and gratitude that passes between us and God. As our actions towards others and our attitudes towards God improve, our discipleship grows, and with it, our righteous desires.
V 36-37. Just as we can feed our righteous desires with acts of service and a humble attitude, we can feed unrighteous desires. "Choose ye this day whom ye will serve." Joshua 24:15
V38. Satan too has his own ledger, and we can certainly rack up the credits side with unrighteous desires and actions, but he has nothing to pay us with. All he has to offer is found in verse 38.
Okay this these last few verses sound terrible right? But if you pay attention to the language used, God isn't sending anyone to hell or to an unquenchable fire. It's just that if we spend our whole life fueling unrighteous desires, one day the time will come when we will see clearly the demands of divine justice, and it will wake up our soul. The sense of guilt, pain and anguish we would feel is LIKE an unquenchable fire. We are doing the damage to ourselves. We would be the ones to shrink in shame, not God sending us to the flames.
"A sinner has his own mind and his own mind damns him. He is damned by mortification and is his own condemner and tormenter… I have no fear of hell fire, that doesn't exist, but the torment and disappointment of the mind of man is as exquisite as a lake burning with fire and brimstone." - Joseph Smith
V41. The chapter ends describing the hap state of those who have reconciled, or retrained, their desires and their will to be in line with God's.
So to end King Benjamin's segment on righteous desires, he wants us to see clearly the consequences of our desires and actions. If we can accomplish that, we can choose which desires to feed and fuel. "With increased vision, comes increased motivation."
_________________________________________________________________________________
Faith in Jesus Christ
Okay so you -- are humble, you recognize where you are
- have righteous desires, you recognize where you want to be
Queue Mosiah Chapter 3
V5-11. Benjamin speaks of the miracles that Christ would perform, and the pains that he would suffer. And then he begins to speak of the atonement.
V12. "For salvation cometh to none such except it be through repentance and faith on the Lord Jesus Christ".
V15. Only through His blood can we be saved. Anything else independent of that, is to no avail.
Everything Benjamin has said so far has led up to these three verses. Verse 17, 18, 19.
When we come to truly believe that there is no other name whereby salvation can come, but only in and through the name of Christ and his atoning blood, then we will be able to put off the natural man, and become a saint.
I could write for a few more hours on that subject, but as to not scare off any more readers for the length of this blog, we'll just sum it up like so… the atonement makes bad men good, and good men better.
Kind of sad that my Faith In Jesus Christ section ended up being the shortest… I just ran out of steam haha.
Read this if you want to dive deeper into that: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/2012/04/the-atonement-and-the-journey-of-mortality?lang=eng
This is evangelicalism at its best. This is the restored gospel at it's finest. Amazing what a little bit of humility, desires directed in the right way, and some faith can do. I hope you can see the change it can make in you as I have seen it have in me.
All the love,
Ryan
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