Jan 3–Jan 9 (Genesis 1–2; Moses 2–3; Abraham 4–5) Come Follow Me Insights with Taylor and Tyler
I'm Taylor, and I'm Tyler. This is Book of
Mormon Central's Come Follow Me Insights. Today, the creation story as found
in Genesis chapters 1 through 2, Moses 2 through 3, and
Abraham chapters 4 through 5. Yeah, so as you just introduced, we're
getting – we're getting three lenses, three different angles on this creation story out
of the scriptures. Our original Genesis account that the Bible opens with, chapters 1 and 2,
beginning with this story of the creation, and then we get the JST for Genesis over here
in the Pearl of Great Price in Moses chapters 2 through 3, and then we get an additional account
in Abraham 4 through 5, and Taylor, quite frankly, some people get frustrated with this because
they say but wait, there are some differences here compared to there and here and this one has
differences from there.
How would you respond? So I have shared my testimony innumerable times
at testimony meeting. If we had recorded every single time I had given my testimony, you would
find discrepancies or things that were different, and it's always a matter of
emphasis; who am I talking to? What currently is on my mind at that moment?
What am I hoping for my audience to experience? And we live in this post-scientific revolution
world where we want everything to line up, but when God originally revealed the creation
stories, he did so for very different purposes than what scientists today might want.
We want to
have every single word line up, and God's like, actually, the purpose – the original purpose
for laying this out, one of the main reasons, was to teach people who God is and who we are,
and not to answer every scientific question. Yeah, this is – if you're looking to Genesis
chapters 1 and 2 or Moses 2 and 3 or Abraham 4 to 5, looking for exact, scientific
blueprints for how the creation took place, you're going to spend a lot of time spinning
wheels and going nowhere, because these accounts aren't really trying to answer the how.
They're
trying to answer predominantly, and you might read this differently, but from my perspective,
they're answering two questions, largely: who? Who is God? Who are we? How does that
relationship fit? And why – why did he create the earth for us? Why do we even exist? Why are we
here? If you're just looking for those two things, this is a great adventure. And then, with
modern revelation, we get a fourth view that we're not going to spend a lot of time
talking about in this particular episode, but modern temple worship involves a great deal
of creation elements and telling the creation story and there are some fairly significant
differences in some of the order of the events, and it's beautiful to have this
four-dimensional view of the creation. So another way to look at this is imagine a
theater where you go to see a story unfold, and the creation story is like the stage and the
props, because the Bible was revealed so God could lay out his plan of salvation, and you have to set
the stage for where that narrative or that play or where that story will occur, and so I'm not
trying to diminish the creation story, but in some ways it's the props that set up the stage,
and if you showed up at the theater and you spent all your time fixating on the props or debating
the placement of the props, or you're like the last time I saw this play, that tree was over
here, we actually miss the whole point of the play or the show which is God's salvation of
his people.
That's what he's trying to do, and it's significant that if you look at the
totality of the Old Testament, how little time God actually spends on the creation story. It's
a significant element, but he could have spent thousands of pages just on the creation story,
but instead, he wants to set the stage so we can understand who he is, who we are, and why this
earth was created to assist in our salvation, so we would hope that perspective can help
you as you consider these different accounts that give us different perspectives, physically
different angles in that theater of looking at the same stage, but seeing it from a different
perspective of what is God trying to do in this story of salvation and what's my role in it?
And actually, one more final thought, you think about the temple, two of the key
characters show up on the creation story – Adam and Eve, and we are invited to imagine ourselves
in the plan of salvation as an Adam or as an Eve, and this way it's a bit more participatory and
interactive, and so instead of us just being passive and just watching the plan of salvation
working out, God is asking us almost as audience members to come up on stage, and we get to
be part of this grand play of salvation. So as we step back for just a few feet and look
at this, it's important to remember that what we're putting in place today with these particular
scriptures as we study them this week is the first of three pillars that uphold the entire plan of
salvation that were put in place long before the foundation of the world.
Before we even create
the world, God sets these three things in place: the creation, the fall of Adam of Eve, and the
infinite atonement of Jesus Christ. Those three pillars are put in place and prepared for and
planned out with blueprints. It's all designed, and now we can begin. Now that we have
everything in order, we can now create the earth. So as we begin, let's model something for you.
There's the account in Genesis chapter 1 verse 1.
We're just going to do one verse here as
an example. So you get the biblical account of what Joseph Smith had to work with
originally when he was making his JST modifications, and you're going to contrast
that then with chapter 2 over here verse 1, so obviously, this one's pretty
simple. It's in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. That's
it. That's what Joseph is – is starting with. But what he writes in Moses chapter 2 verse 1 is:
"And it came to pass the Lord spake unto Moses, saying," remember, this comes on the heels of
what came last week that we talked about – Moses chapter 1, this what we love to call the
grand prologue to the whole scriptural story, the whole canon kind of begins with this sweeping,
cosmic vision that Moses has had and that we've lost.
So now we pick it up in verse 1 of chapter 2
again. "It came to pass the Lord spake unto Moses, saying: Behold, I reveal unto you
concerning this heaven and this earth; write the things which I speak. I am the
Beginning and the End, the Almighty God; by mine Only Begotten I created these things;
yea," now here's your crossover, "in the beginning I created the heaven and the earth upon which
thou standest." So you're seeing there's an awful lot that gets added to that verse,
a lot of context that God the Father is talking about doing this creation through
his Only Begotten Son which he had mentioned in great detail back in chapter 1 as – if you
read verse 32 again back in chapter 1 – "by the word of my power have I created these worlds
without number which is mine Only Begotten Son." So it's a – it's a powerful reminder yet again of
where Jesus Christ fits in this first pillar of the plan of our Heavenly Father for our salvation.
You'll notice he talks about being the beginning and the end, right? He creates us in order to
save us, to create this one eternal round where we're wrapped into this covenantal relationship
with him.
It's beautiful. Those analogies of beginning and end, the Alpha and the Omega that
you're going to get in the New Testament, this the first and the last letter of that Greek
alphabet, which, by the way, just as a side note, doesn't that give us an opportunity to have
greater hope for the future if we make a little play on the words here? I'm the beginning and the
end. It's one of his titles, and if you stop and think about one of the attributes of the gospel
of Jesus Christ, it's to have faith in Christ, trust him, it's to repent of our sins, it's to get
baptized, it's to get the gift of the Holy Ghost, and then it's to endure to the – to the end. It's
interesting if you think about one way that that works in English.
It doesn't translate well into
any other language, but in English it's beautiful to say wait, it's not just a matter of me gutting
my way through a miserable life until I get to the end, enduring to the end in a slog kind
of fashion, it's actually today, enduring in my faith and my covenant path progression,
enduring to Jesus. It's connecting me to Christ. One of his titles is I am the beginning and the
end, and if I'm enduring to the end, I'm enduring to Christ; I'm holding onto him today. It's not
just a matter of saying if I can just get my way through life then I get this grand reward at the
end. I love the way that this plays out along the process of life to say I'm going nowhere
that matters today or tomorrow or next week or next year without the Lord Jesus Christ.
He is the only means whereby I can hope to endure in anything, in any aspect of life.
I love that, Tyler.
I want to give an additional perspective here that when we actually read the
Old Testament from the Old Testament perspective instead of the 21st century scientific
perspective, we actually see a grander view of what God is doing. For example, we actually get
this in the book of Abraham, that the word create here in Hebrew also has a sense of organizing,
bringing things that are in chaotic disorder into order, and as we go through these passages, you'll
notice how God is separating opposites that have been co-mingled into chaotic disorder, and he's
ordering the world. So part of what God does, is when he does creation, he's actually
organizing, putting in order. That's the first thought is the creation story is about organizing.
The second thought is the creation story is the answer to what question? So we often have
scientific questions, but when God originally revealed this, people were not asking the
scientific questions we ask today.
So if we actually understand the questions that people
had, then we can read this with, I think, greater awareness and understanding and personal value,
and it's again, God wanting to reveal who he is, who we are, and why this is all happening, and
it's actually the seven days seem to be patterned on an ancient temple dedication plan where
there was a seven-day dedicatory service, and on the seventh day, the king would rest
from all his labors and everybody be resting from their labors of preparing the temple for
God to be there and to be holy. So if you read the creation story through that lens, it's also
very interesting through the temple perspective. And then finally, the third thing that
might be helpful, if we look at the ancient perspective – the ancient Israelite
perspective – in their world at their time, existence was brought about by things being given
a name with a purpose and a function. It's really interesting. When we think about existence today,
we think about materiality and it's got atoms or molecules. And certainly God made use of all those
things, but in a story telling that God revealed in the creation story to his people anciently, he
was helping them to see the purpose and function of the world in their salvation.
So I want to
make this really clear. In the ancient world, for the ancient Israelites, for them, existence
happened when something had purpose and function and that purpose and function had a name.
So as you're reading the creation story, look at actually how God names things. He says
things like let there be light. You might notice in the creation story, the sun and the moon
and stars are actually created after the sun. We might think from a scientific point, how could
there be light if there's no sun, moon, and stars? But as you think about it from an ancient
Israelite perspective, as God's trying to reveal to them that he is the source of light, he is
the one who brings it into being, and he gives it purpose and function and the name conveys that.
So
those two things, look for purpose and function, and then look for how names are used to tell
doctrinal stories that can matter to our lives. So let's dive in with the creation events
that are outlined here, and as we jump in for these different days that are listed, it's
important to note that you and I use the word day to generally denote a 24-hour passage of
time on our clocks today. Elder Bruce R. McConkie, clear back in 1982 in the Ensign, he says,
"What is a day? It is a specified time period. It's an age, an eon, a division of eternity.
It is the time between two identifiable events, and each day of whatever length has the
duration needed for its purposes. There is no revealed recitation specifying that
each of the six days involved in the creation was of the same duration." Did you catch that? He
just said there's nothing in the record that would say that these are equal time markers through
the story. They're just the beginning and the end of a creative period that was designated by God.
Then he goes on to say, "The Mosaic and Abrahamic accounts place the creative accounts on the same
successive days, so the Mosaic and Abrahamic would be Genesis and Moses as well as Abraham –
they line up with what happened on day 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and then they're resting on day 7.
But listen
to this, Elder McConkie in that same article says, "The temple account, for reasons that are
apparent to those familiar with this teachings, has a different division of events. It seems
clear that the six days are one continuing period and that there is no one place where the
dividing lines between the successive events must, of necessity, be placed."
He's – what Elder McConkie's saying here is what Taylor introduced earlier, is this is like a
stage production and we get – we get the script, and different directors and different producers
and different stage managers and costume designers can take that exact same script and they can
portray it quite differently in different settings.
It's the same script, but let's not get
too caught up as we go through these days, in the minutia, in the fine-tuned detail. But there are
some principles to be gained along the way, so we're going to begin with day one in – and we're
going to take it through originally Moses chapter 2. So let’s start in verse 1 through 5. This
is day one, which can kind of seem confusing to people because you're thinking he's creating light
and other things. What he says is, in verse 2, "The earth was without form and void; and I caused
darkness to come up upon the face of the deep; and my spirit moved upon the face of the water;
for I am God." It's an interesting statement. You have this earth that is without form, it's
a void, there's no life on it.
It's just the elements are there, and it's filled with darkness,
but the spirit moved upon the face of the water. Huh, I wonder. I wonder if there could be any
connection between what's happening with the earth here and what happens with us as God's children
at times when we end up in chaos, when we end up going astray either a little bit or a lot,
that idea of his spirit moving over us, brooding over us, kind of preparing the way to
bring into higher order, a higher state of being, that which has gone into chaos. And for any of
you who are into science, you know that the one absolute constant out in the universe of science
is entropy, and disorder, this chaos, this – this trend towards greater – greater disorder, greater
chaotic situations until God gets involved, and then he brings higher order, which, by the
way, is so fascinating because when Joseph Smith comes on the scene in the 19th century,
you get this really, really strong debate in that day that isn't new in Joseph's day; it's
been going on for decades, for hundreds of years up to this point to one degree or another,
it's a debate between two polar opposites, and it's one that says creationism ex
nihilo is what happened with the earth, that God stood up as if he has a magic wand and he
waves that magic wand and says with the power of his word alone, let there be an earth and boom,
out of nothing – that's what ex nihilo means, creationism ex nihilo is creation out of nothing;
it's just there.
That's one side of the argument on the creation side in Joseph's day.
And the other side is evolution without the influence of
a heavenly being, without a creator, and Joseph comes on the scene and the doctrine
he teaches says, uh – you're both wrong. And Taylor already mentioned it. From the Abraham
account we don't ever use this idea of creation out of nothing, it's God organized the heavens
and the earth. He brings things together not terribly unlike a cook going into a kitchen
with a whole bunch of ingredients that are scattered and separate and none of
them taste really good in isolation, but a really gifted cook knows how to take just
the right amount of this and just the right amount of that, and that, and a dash of this, and put
them together in the right sequence, and provide enough of the resources to combine them in the
right ways and put them in the right form and put them in the right temperature for the right amount
of time, to pull them out and let them cool, and now all of a sudden, we've organized
something, we've created something, but it wasn't created out of nothing; it was organized from
matter that was already in existence in the world. And that's a powerful concept as we – as
we begin our journey through here is that God's using the resources that are available
in the universe to accomplish this. Well, that's a really interesting metaphor that
the cook, the cook actually even might watch until the ingredients obey his will to make something.
And also the invitation that as children of God, he's invited all of us to be creators with him,
to overcome disorder, to put order into the world, to help bring more light and goodness by taking
the time to provide purpose and function, named purpose and function, for what's already
in the world, to do something new that's never been done before.
So if you look in your life,
your desire to do something is that creative spark that comes from God to put order where there
might be disorder, to bring a little bit of light, to help the world to be a little less fallen, to
spread forth God's kingdom one step at a time. It's beautiful, it's that any situation you go
in where you see chaos or disorder and you help bring it to a higher state of being –
mommies do this every day all the time. Leaders in the Church do this all the time.
They're trying to find ways to bring greater order and stability to people's lives.
You do
it every time you go and clean a room, not just when you bake or cook. You do it when you help a
child or when you teach. You're taking ideas that are kind of scattered and random and messy, and
you're bringing them together so people can say, ah, I see how it fits. You're creating.
Or if you're just listening to somebody, right? You've listened to them and they have
this chaotic thinking and they talk through it and they're like, oh, I think I understand
what's going on in my brain right now, or a painter who takes a whole bunch of paints that in
isolation, they're not beautiful.
But they figure out the right way to put those together and bring
order, and isn't it amazing that God's children all have implanted within us these –
these desires, these drives to create, to build things? Architecture, not
just on canvas, but in buildings, in dance, in symphonies and in music
productions, we're taking that which is disordered and we're making it
beautiful, all as a reflection of this much bigger, this astronomically big creation
project that we're talking going through. Let me add one more thing to that before you erase
it. The word or – green, I should not use green. The word ordinance, here we go, did I spell
that right? Ordinance comes from the word order. There's chaos in our lives, spiritual, physical,
otherwise. God has revealed ordinances to provide order.
It's actually the creation is still
unfolding. I want you to remember, every week, every seventh day we all rest and participate in
the order of sacrament so the chaos of our lives is just put aside for just a bit. We've had these
– well, periods of chaos essentially, we get down to day seven, and God allows us to put our lives
back in order through the ordinance of sacrament which is focused on his Only Begotten who was the
one who actually created everything that we have. Beautiful, now let's jump in to the rest of day
one.
So the earth is organized, it's brought together, it's without form, it's void, and
then in verse 3 it says, "And I, God, said: Let there be light; and there was light. And
I called the light Day; and the darkness, I called Night; and this I did by the word
of my power, and it was done as I spake; and the evening and the morning were the first
day." By the way, this won't get any of you into heaven; you won't be asked this question on any
final exam at the pearly gates, I don't think, but it's fascinating that in an ancient
Hebrew perspective, this is why to this day Jewish people and many of the middle
eastern religions, they start their new day at sundown, in the evening, because of this
concept here.
You'll notice how it worded it, it said, "it was done as I spake, and the evening
and the morning were the first day." The first thing mentioned in the day was the evening. So as
soon as the sun sets we now flip our calendar to the new day. And you see that in our culture
even carried over, not for the same reason, we don't flip our calendars in a western
world until midnight, but on December 24th when it goes evening, we call it Christmas Eve.
On December 31st we call it New Year's Eve. October 31st is All Halloweds’ Eve; the next
day is All Saints’ Day or All Hallowed's Day. November 1st, the day you're supposed to remember
your honored ancestors who have passed on.
That's right, so we still have elements of this tradition
permeating some of the things that we do, so we begin our new day at that evening, go
in through the night, and we call it day one. So day two, or the second time period, is the
shortest one by far. It only covers three verses here from verse 6 to verse 8, and it's where he's
– he talks about let there be a firmament in the midst of the water, and it was so. That – the
word firmament to us feels like firm, something that's the process of making something firm,
steadfast and immovable, sounds like a foundation. Another word would be actually like a vault.
Yeah, the word in Hebrew is more of an expanse or a covering. It's a – again – Taylor has mentioned
this before.
We can't read these ancient accounts through 21st-century lenses with 21st-century
sensitivities to science, and what we know from satellites and from trips out into
space and our views of the atmosphere. Yeah, we know there's not a brick wall stopping
satellites from getting out there, or rocket ships, it's basically just air. Yeah, so what you
have is, to the ancients, they see the earth and you've got water on the face of the earth and then
there's water up in the firmament, and beyond the firmament are the sun, moon ,and the stars, and
we'll get to those in a minute, but that was their view, this expanse of heaven was like a dome,
and the water is up here, and every now and then, the windows of heaven would be opened, and all
this water would pour out, that's called rain. Or sometimes you see water shooting out of the
ground, that's like geysers or rivers, and so they believed that the water was also underneath,
and what's interesting here is that God does not correct the ancient Israelite scientific
misconception of how the world is arranged. He didn't take the time to say, hey everybody, I
know this is like 4,000 years earlier than what you guys really need to hear, but let me tell you
how atoms work and actually really where all the rain comes from.
He doesn't do that. He focuses
on working within their understanding of how they thought the world worked, revealing himself to
them within a framework that made sense to them. So sometimes today we get a little confused
because we have a scientific revolution going back 400 years, we now realize there's not just a bunch
of water sitting in there above some brick vault and then every now and then the windows open and
poured out. We know that's not the case.
But we still have these ancient, revealed texts that God
gave to his ancient saints to convince them of who he was. So if we can listen to their perspective,
we perhaps might get more meaning for us today instead of just frustration, like why would God
reveal these things in a way that doesn't fit with science, because he cared more about
people knowing him than he cared about what we might call scientific accuracy.
Wonderful. So we close day two. Ironically, the one day that God doesn't pronounce it good.
It's kind of one of those funny things where you get every day is pronounced good, and
day three is going to be twice blessed, but they too didn't get the it is good label, and
I don't know that I would read too much into that other than it's a fairly simple process from
their perspective of what's happening as we divide the waters between the earth and up in the sky.
Now we get to day three, verse 9 through 13, where he's gathering water together and causing
dry land to appear.
And he calls the water seas and the dry land he calls earth, and
you'll notice at the bottom of verse 10, you could mark this, God saw that all which I
had made – all these things which he had made were good. So there's your first good
in day three, and then he brings forth all of these plants, the flora of the earth, the
grass, the herb yielding seed, the fruit tree and the tree yielding fruit whose seed should be in
itself upon the earth and was so even as I spake. And you'll notice at the end of verse 12 that
God saw that all these things which he had made were good.
There it is again. So it is the
twice-blessed day. There are some, not all, but there are some Jewish traditions today that
hearken back to that where they see Tuesday, because this is Sunday, Monday, Tuesday on their
calendar, they see Tue – they see Tuesday in some traditions as this twice-blessed day. Many of
them will try to get married on those days or have celebrations on that day – see it as kind
of this extra blessed day of the Lord. I want to just share again this perspective
of the importance of purpose and function in names and notice that how God gives names
to these things. Now, we're so familiar with these words we may not think much of it, that
something's called the earth and we get that. If we were listening to this in Hebrew or reading it
in Hebrew, we'd actually see some wordplays going on, but eventually Adam gets created, and the word
earth – the word for earth and the word for Adam actually both come from essentially the same root
word, and the fact that he actually calls it good is to suggest that we actually are built from
the earth, from the dust, but we also are good, our creation is good.
Let me just share
just a perspective on this. If you're an ancient Israelite, you're familiar with – from
other cultures around you, the Egyptians, the Mesopotamians, there are these polytheistic, pagan
societies who have lots of gods they worship, and they have their own creation stories.
It's interesting in those creation stories, particularly the Mesopotamian creation stories,
when they talk about humans being created – they talk about humans being created from the blood
of a rebellious god who lost in a civil war among the gods. Think about that. What does it
say about humans? They're basically just being the bloody offspring of rebellion, and look at
what we're going to see here in this text that humans actually are the offspring or the creation
of God himself and not some rebellious god. It's – that's a beautiful
concept to remember is that everything we’re talking about in the creation
are things that God has organized and brought together, but there is a significant difference
between all of God's creations or creatures and God's children. You know, I look at my own
family situation and there are a lot of things in my home that my wife and I have built and
our family has built and created in our home. But none of those things have my DNA and my
wife's DNA in them.
None of those things have the capacity or the agency to act and to grow and to
learn intelligently and to become more like their parents and ultimately more like God. So with all
of the beauties and the wonders of the creation, it's important, I think, to note from a scriptural
perspective, we have incredible responsibility as God's children to take care of all of the rest
of these things that we're talking about in the creative process, to not see them as things
that can be abused or destroyed at will for our own benefit, but rather this responsibility
and we'll come back to that a little bit later. And I’ll just share one more brief story because
we're talking about plants. A few years ago I asked a plant specialist at a university, like,
could I take a class from you to learn plant names, and he said actually, I have something
better, I have an app called Seek, S-E-E-K, which you turn it on and you point your phone,
your camera at any living object and it actually will identify what it is.
Well, a few weeks
later I was biking in Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah with my family, and literally about every
ten yards I was stopping and getting off my bike because there was this profusion of wildflowers,
and I'd pull out my phone and I would actually look at the flower through the phone
and find out exactly what the name of that flower was – its life cycle, when it typically blooms
and what it's related to, and I think I learned the names of thirty new flowers in just about
an hour. My daughter and I kept stopping and looking. My wife's, like, what's taking you
guys so long to do this bike ride? It was interesting to me.
I came to love these flowers
because I knew their names, and it dawned on me, you cannot love what you do not know, and you
cannot know what doesn't have a name, and if you don't know the name of something, you can't be in
a relationship with it, and I love how God gives names to everything he creates, a purpose
and a function, and he knows you by name. That I find absolutely beautiful, that
the love I felt for these flowers that I'd never seen before and now I know their
names, I realized God knows me by name, and if I feel this love for a flower that
I'd just met and now I know its name, how might God actually feel about me who he's
known forever and he's known my name long before I knew my own name.
God knows you. You have a name
and this creation story is for you. Beautiful. So day four, according to the scriptural accounts,
all three of them, Genesis, Moses, and Abraham, talks about God creating the sun, the moon, and
the stars. The greater light, it says, was the sun and it would rule the day and the lesser light
was the moon and it would rule over the night. So it's fascinating that in those three scriptural
accounts we get the plant kingdom created in day three and then the celestial bodies
giving light to the earth on day four. Back maybe in the ancient Hebrew times that wasn't
a big deal to them, as Taylor's been talking, in a post-scientific world where we understand
a little better the microbiology and the photosynthesis elements, you can see why it might
make a little more sense to swap those two days as far as the need for the sun to be
created probably before those plants, which now brings us to day five which
takes us from verse 20 down to verse 23, and here is where he's creating beginning
with the animals in the waters, the whales and then the winged fowl after his kind, and
all these animals are blessed in verse 23, sorry, in verse 22, to be fruitful and to
multiply and fill the waters in the sea and let the fowl multiply in the earth and the
evening and the morning were the fifth day. And then you'll notice it's at the beginning
of the sixth day, so 24 through 31, where in the scripture account you get this
crossover where he then creates the cattle and the beasts upon the face of the land, and after we're
done with all of those, these bigger animals, God saw that all these things were good, and then
he begins the most important part of the creation from our perspective, verse 26, I, God, said unto
mine Only Begotten, which was with me from the beginning: Let us make man in our image, after
our likeness; and it was so.
So now we get Adam created in the image of God the Father and God
the Son after their likeness, after their image. Their essence, their similitude. I want to read
the next verse here. "And I, God, created man in mine own image, in the image of mine Only Begotten
created I him; male and female, created I them." Now again, if we're ancient Israelites, we're
familiar with the surrounding cultures that we live in, and in these other cultures, people
would worship their gods by actually creating images of the gods.
The idea was – it wasn't that
the image was the god but was actually kind of the essence of the god, or the representation of
the god. If you were an ancient Israelite, knowing that this is what people do, they want the god in
their midst, and so they actually create a statue to remind themselves that god is with us, and
then suddenly they’re revealed this mind-blowing revelation. It's the reverse. I – you are my
image. Look, wait, wait, wait, gods don't make images. Humans make images of the gods to make
sure that these all pagan – those pagan gods can be with us wherever we go and, God has completely
reversed us and told these ancient Israelites, you are my divine image, which is why we find
throughout the Old Testament, God's telling people don't make images, don't make images.
It's my job
to make images and it's to make you guys like me. That's beautiful, this idea of God creating the
image of God – you don't need an idol for God because you're looking at what God created
to remind us. It's mind-blowing. It's just – comparing from the culture they were in,
it's just so revelatory, I just think it was a massive thrill to these ancient Israelites
to have these truths revealed to them. Okay, now we jump into chapter 3 of Moses, so
we begin, so this one's a little different, day seven, because it's in chapter 3 of the Book
of Moses and verse 1 through 3 you get the seventh day, which is this day of rest, so it would be
the Saturday on our calendars today, which is beautiful because for all of those Old Testament
prophets and those people, they would rest on the Sabbath on Saturday because they are commemorating
the greatest event of all time from anybody's perspective up to that point, and the only thing
that could possibly cause us to want to move the Sabbath worship is if there's an event that might
be even more mind-blowing and more significant to our eternal progression than the creation
itself.
Well, you have the creation, fall, and atonement, the beginning and the end, and when
Jesus Christ raises from the dead, when he arises from that dead state in the tomb and he steps out
on that Sunday morning, that first Easter morning, that's why Christians today – many Christians
today, not all – but many Christians today now have our day of rest on the first day of the
week, not the seventh day of the week, because we're commemorating what to us now is the single
greatest event in the history of the universe from our perspective which is the culmination of the
infinite atonement with Jesus's resurrection, with the Savior's resurrection on
that first Easter morning, on Sunday. As a reminder, for the ancient
Israelites, when they heard this story, it reminded them of a typical temple dedication
that would take place over seven days where everybody's invited to participate in removing
the chaos, right, you’ve to build the building and get everything ready to go. There’s just a lot of
work, and on the seventh day the king enters the temple as God's representative and pronounces
all is good and everyone can be at rest, and the point here is that God is the
king of this world.
He wants the world to be at a place of order and not disorder, and
symbolically, it takes seven days of effort, and anytime anybody rebels against God or causes
disorder, it breaks – it breaks the system and you have to reset and get the temple rededicated
again and go through that seven-day process of the temple being ready for the king
or God to enter into it. So again, as you read this creation story, think about it
from the temple perspective, that God is preparing his earthly abode as a representation of his
heavenly abode and invites all of us in to be finally at rest, to go no more out and no more
to be experiencing the fallen nature of disorder. Beautiful. Now, you'll notice that as you get
into Genesis 1 and then Genesis 2 and here in Moses 2 and Moses 3, that in these accounts
it says after we've gone through all of this, then it notifies us – look at verse 5. "Every
plant of the field before it was in the earth, every herb of the field before it grew. For I, the
Lord, created all things of which I have spoken, spiritually, before they were naturally upon
the face of the earth.
For I, the Lord God, had not caused it to rain upon the face of the
earth. And I, the Lord God, had created all the children of men; and not yet a man to till
the ground." And you're saying, wait a minute, I thought we just created Adam back there at
the end of chapter 2, and now he's saying I haven't yet caused it to rain, I've created
all the children of men but not yet a man to till the ground. So we realize that there are
these two creations, there's a spiritual creation and then there's the physical creation. It's not
unlike any architect today who doesn't just go and build a building. They generally plan it out
step by step by step all along the way before they ever pick up a single piece of wood
and a hammer or lay any kind of foundation, they already have a picture of what it's going to
look like and how to get from this flat ground or whatever soil you're working with, to that
finished product. So I love this in our own life that it gives us hope in our relationships.
It gives us hope in our work, in our careers, whatever those careers are, this
idea that with the help of the Lord we can – we can map things out, we can see
where we're trying to get and we can figure out the best possible way to get there with
the help of the Lord and then we begin the actual process of doing it.
It's powerful on the
pathway of discipleship to recognize that Jesus is the author and the finisher of our faith.
He's the ultimate builder. He's already laid out the blueprints for us in scriptures and from
the words of the living prophets. We don't have to make this up as we're going along. We don't
have to try to figure out what a faith-filled life on the covenant path looks like blindly. He's
given us lots and lots of resources to work with in now carrying out our discipleship, because the
spiritual creation's already set in place for us. So look at verse 7. "I, the Lord God,
formed man from the dust of the ground." So now it's a physical creation out of the dust.
Taylor has talked about this word in the past, dust being the same root as earth and
Adam; we're all – we were all formed out of the dust of the ground being taken
– isn't that interesting? – from chaos through a creative process of procreation
inside of our mother's womb, we were all formed and the dust that she was eating through
the various forms of food become a part of us and a new life is born, a state of order, not just
random elements of the earth but organized into this living, breathing, growing daughter or son
of God that has capacity.
It's beautiful. It's out of the dust of the ground Adam was formed and
he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul, the first flesh
upon the earth, the first man also; nevertheless, all things were before created but spiritually
were they created; and made according to my word." So naturally people ask the question,
well, some scientists think that there were humans before Adam, we havedinosaur bones, how
do we explain all that? I just want to remind everybody, when God revealed the creation story,
he wasn't particularly interested in telling the ancient Israelites all about dinosaurs,
because frankly, it's irrelevant to salvation. He wanted to tell about who he was and who they
are, and so we now have all these questions that the creation stories were not designed to answer.
Yeah, so the Church in a variety – we've had different statements from different
leaders through many decades of the Church giving their best informed opinions of
the time, and that's wonderful.
One of the most recent statements that we have in print from the
Church comes actually from the New Era magazine for youth back in February of 2016 when
in their section I have a Question, the question they asked that month was what about
dinosaurs? And here was the answer printed in that February 2016 edition: "Did dinosaurs live and
die on this earth long before man came along? There have been no revelations on this question
and the scientific evidence says yes. (You can learn more about it by studying paleontology
if you like, even at Church-owned schools.) The details of what happened on this planet
before Adam and Eve aren't a huge doctrinal concern of ours. The accounts of the creation in
the scriptures are not meant to provide a literal, scientific explanation of the specific processes,
time periods, or events involved." I think that's beautiful where at least in that statement from
the Church, it's this idea of there are a lot of questions to be explored and they're not a huge
doctrinal concern to us because our story picks up when Adam and Eve, the first children of our
heavenly parents to have the spirits that lived up in heaven with God, come down into their
tabernacle of clay, that's when we pick up our story, and anything that happened on the earth
or in parts of the earth previous to that event, it's of no major doctrinal concern to us.
Let me just build on what we've said before. Imagine this theater metaphor.
Let's say there
were a whole bunch of stories that played out in that theater before God says I'm actually
now going to play out the plan of salvation. I mean it's not the perfect analogy, but it might be
interesting to learn about all those other things. Personally, I'm fascinated by paleontology and
geology. As you and I have spent a lot of time in the great wonders of the American west and
the national parks, there's so much beauty and joy there, we don't have to get ourselves
all tied up in knots like how does it all fit together? Let's just focus on Jesus revealed
himself, we stick with him, and he can save us. So the same year, 2016, in October of that year in
the New Era, the Church published this question: "What does the Church believe about evolution?"
That's a big question in the science versus religion debate that's gone on for centuries,
and here was their answer.
Once again, New Era, October 2016: "The Church has no official position
on the theory of evolution. Organic evolution, or changes to species’ inherited traits
over time is a matter for scientific study. Nothing has been revealed concerning evolution.
Though the details of what happened on earth before Adam and Eve, including how their
bodies were created, have not revealed. Our teaching regard – our teachings regarding
man's origin are clear and come from revelation. 'Before we were born on earth, we were
spirit children of heavenly parents, with bodies in their image. God directed
the creation of Adam and Eve and placed their spirits in their bodies, and we are all
descendants of Adam and Eve, our first parents, who were created in God's image. There were no
spirit children of Heavenly Father on the earth before Adam and Eve were created. In addition, for
a time they lived alone in a paradisiacal setting where there was neither human death nor
future family. They fell from that state and this was fall was an essential part of Heavenly
Father's plan for us to become like him.' " So it's important to note as we move forward that
there are a lot of questions that we still have that the scriptures aren't intending to answer and
the prophets are not saying nobody should look for these answers; they're saying those are questions
for scientists to go and explore and figure out. It's not in the revealed word, many of those
issues.
But what we do know is Adam and Eve are God's first children on this earth. They're
not creations, they're children of God, and that's significant, created in the image of God.
Adding to this, imagine you have a tool belt and the scriptures are part of that tool
belt and you get to a challenge, say, to a scientific question and you try to use the tool of
scriptures, the scriptures may not be designed to answer that scientific question, and if you say
well I'm getting rid of the scriptures because that tool doesn't work for this problem, well
gosh, if you need to nail something in but all you have is a screwdriver, you don't throw the screw
driver away simply because the problem at hand, you've brought the wrong tool to it.
I'll also just share a couple of other quick things.
The word theory actually
comes from this ancient word to see. Theories are explanations to help us
better see and make sense of a lot of data, and with more and better data, you can see more
clearly, and with better explanations or theories you can get more accurate – accurate
explanations of how the world works. So we shouldn't be afraid of seeking to understand
different theories of how the world works. And then finally I'll share this. We are taught
that all truth will be circumscribed into one great whole, and I have taught this to students
before, that if you find beautiful truth 1 and beautiful truth 2 and another truth, all these
truths, but maybe some of them don't seem to fit together, it's interesting, if you were playing
with a puzzle and found two beautiful pieces, but they didn't go together immediately, would
you throw those pieces out? If you did that, you could not complete the puzzle, and I actually had
this conversation with my son David about, when he was – about five years ago when he was eight, and
I said David, what would happen if you threw those puzzle pieces out? He said, I would be angry,
because I couldn't finish the puzzle.
And I said that's really smart. In my experience in life,
people are often angry because they have found religious truth or doctrinal truth and scientific
truth, and every now and then they can't make it perfectly fit together and they throw out one
or the other, and a lot of people I know who are angry that either rejected science, generally
speaking, or rejected religion instead of saying I'm going to hold onto all the truth until
God shows me how it all fits together. God has all truth – all truth. So if we want to be
like him, we should pursue seeking all truth, and my personal experience has been there's
so much tremendous joy in studying literally everything, and holding questions in your mind
even if you don't have final answers for how things fit together.
Keep studying, have faith,
keep working at it, hold on to the most important truths which is that you are a child of God,
but then with that power, you can grow up and learn anything about the world that humanity
has ever discovered or God is ready to reveal. Now look at verse 8 back in Moses chapter 3.
He says, "I, the Lord God, planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there I put the man whom
I had formed." It's kind of fun, just a little trivia thing, today, when you look at most
maps in our – at least in our western culture, all of our maps are oriented with the wording
so that north is at the top of the map. North is the top – it's a cardinal
direction – cardinal direction. In antiquity often, guess which the cardinal
direction was – their map orientation – east. East is at the top in many of them,
not in every case, but in many of them, it's the dominant direction up on – up on the top
of the map, so it's fascinating that he placed the garden eastward – at this top, which creates kind
of this feeling in English, the word the fall, it really does create kind of this feeling
of it's forward and downward into mortality as they – as they're going to leave the
garden.
It's just – it's kind of a fun play on that directional word there.
This is not going to save you, I don't think, but we get that eastward-facing
cardinal direction showing up in our maps still today. So for example, in
Hebrew and Arabic, the word for the right hand is yemen, like in our word son of the right hand,
Ben – yemine, or Benjamin, and you actually, the farthest right hand or south Arab country is
Yemen. It literally means the right hand because you're facing east, it's as far south or as far
right as you can go, and actually, the word black like Black Sea means north and the Red Sea means
south, that's really how they would distinguish, the Black Sea's the one on the north and the Red
Sea's the one on the south. So — but the cardinal direction again is facing east, so that's the gee
whiz file if you're playing a celestial bingo, you might be able to win some prizes.
Okay, so now we have Adam created, he's put into the garden in Eden, and out of the ground,
verse 9, it says, "I, the Lord God, made to grow every tree naturally that is pleasant to the sight
of man, and man could behold it." Um, by the way, it brings us back yet again to this idea that
was mentioned over there in chapter 2 verse 26, when this spiritual creation was being laid out
and he says, "Let them," meaning man and woman, "have dominion over the fishes of the sea
and over the fowls of the air and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every
creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." Again, it comes back to not this
entitlement idea, but more this caretaking, this stewardship over the earth to truly
treat these created elements with respect. So we often think about dominating.
This word
probably would be better translated as stewardship or kingship. Could you imagine any king or queen
in their right mind wanting to destroy their kingdom? It doesn't make any sense. In fact, what
you want to do is to protect it, to nurture it, to grow it, develop it, so when the Lord tells Adam
and Eve and all of their descendants, all of us, we have dominion over the world, it's he's giving
us divine kingship and stewardship that is our purpose and our function to grow this garden
called earth, to not destroy it, to protect it, to take care of it, and the more we do
that, it actually creates more order in the world and more opportunities for more
people to have thriving lives of joy now and the possibility of salvation in the future.
Beautiful. So now we jump back down in chapter 3 and it says, "And it became also a living soul.
But it was spiritual in the day that I created it; for in many things that sphere in which
I God created it, yea, even all things which I prepared for the use of man, and man saw
that it was good for food.
And I, the Lord God, planted the tree of life also," notice the detail
here, "in the midst of the garden." The word midst denotes central or middle, the mid-part of
the garden. He didn't put the tree of life on the outskirts or in the suburbs of Eden. He put
it downtown in this garden, it's in the middle. Well, building upon this, think about temples.
Temples are symbolic of that original tree of life, and if you go to Salt Lake City today,
the temple in Salt Lake City is actually the measurement spot for where everybody
else references where they are in the city and the whole valley, the whole
Salt Lake Valley, the entire valley, it's all – even though the temple happens to be
geographically way in the north end, you don't have a lot of space north of it, everybody defines
where they're at in reference to the center spot which is the temple, which is symbolically
the tree of life which is God himself. Now the fascinating conclusion to verse 9 – so we
go back to where he says that, "I, the Lord God planted the tree of life also in the midst of the
garden," and then you turn the page over and it says, "and also the tree of knowledge of good and
evil," which really sets the stage for next week in our lesson on the fall that we don't know how
big the midst of the garden is and what exactly was implied by that, if it meant
that they're exactly side by side, right there smack dab in the middle of the garden,
the tree of knowledge of good and evil here, but there are some interesting things to note
here.
Who planted these trees, both of them? "I, the Lord God, planted them," and
he planted them both in the midst of the garden somewhere somehow, in reference
to each other we don't know, once again. But that's important to note lest we get the
idea that the fall is – is a terrible mistake, that it should have never happened
and now it forced God into plan B, but to realize no, it looks like God is setting
the stage for phase 2 of his plan. Phase 1 was the creation of the earth, and as it's finishing,
he then mentions okay, now we're going to put these two trees and we're setting the stage
for something else that was prepared for and mapped out in the blueprint, the master plan,
before the foundation of the world even began, God's preparing the way for this fall
to occur.
Now will there be consequences that we talk about next week? Absolutely,
and we're still dealing with those today, but this was not plan B. We'll notice that
God doesn't say a plan of happiness, a plan of salvation, it is the plan of salvation. There's
one plan and he's executing on it, he's inviting all of us to participate in that grand work.
Beautiful. Now let's jump down to verse 15. "I, the Lord God, took the man and put him into
the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it," similar to what Taylor was talking about before
with stewardship, with kingship, it's this – the dominion isn't to dominate, it's to nurture
and to bring forth that life, and in this case, living in Eden, it's fairly easy because you're
– don't seem to be having to pull a lot of thorns and weeds and deal with a lot of critters
trying to eat your fruit and your vegetable production.
Seems to just grow spontaneously.
The word keep we also see in other – lots of places – keep my commandments. It's the same word;
it's all about protection. If you're into soccer, there is a goal-keeper, and the whole point
of the goal-keeper is to protect the goal, to protect the goal and so that's what to keep
means is, you want to protect, grow, develop, nurture and take care of.
Now look at the command, verse 16 and 17. "I, the Lord God, commanded the
man saying," now notice – notice these words, "of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely
eat." What percentage is that, Taylor? Well, remember I told you I didn't do very well on math,
of every tree, and whether you like math or not, this one's pretty simple math, "of every tree of
the garden, thou mayest freely eat." There are no electric fences around any of the
trees. You have agency to freely consume fruit off of any of the trees, and then
you'll notice the very first word of verse 17, it's a qualifier – but.
So what the word but
is doing here is it's taking the phrase that came before, phrase A, and it's setting
up a contrast. In spite of phrase A, you need to watch out for phrase B,
because there are some consequences attached. You're free to eat it, but just know
that one of these trees has some consequences on it. So what is phrase B? You can eat
of every – every tree in this garden, but verse 17, "but of the tree of knowledge
of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it." Now, if you like marking your scriptures or if
you like annotating them in any way, this – this little marking here in Moses chapter 3 might
be helpful to some of you.
If you take the word nevertheless as it appears there in that verse,
and you put an open parenthesis right before it, and then go down a few lines and close
that parenthesis after it says forbid it, what you have now enclosed in a – in a nice,
little parenthetical statement, is the JST addition to the Genesis account. So this phrase
does not exist in the Bible. It – the way that the biblical account reads, it just starts with, "but
of the tree of knowledge of good and evil" and "thou shalt not eat of it for in the day thou
eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." That's it. But Joseph Smith through revelation inserts this
little phrase, "nevertheless, thou mayest choose for thyself, for it is given unto thee; but
remember that I forbid it." Now you're noticing that the word nevertheless is semi-related to
the word but because it connects two phrases and it's kind of a – in spite of phrase
A, B's going to happen, or despite A, B. But nevertheless is a little even more forceful.
It's a little stronger, it's three words: never the less.
In English we could also say
always the greater. Well what is always the greater if nevertheless is sitting here as the
connecting word? Always the greater is what comes next; it's phrase B. It's that which follows. So
now in that context, look at phrase A, "of the tree of knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not
eat of it." That's phrase A. Don't eat that fruit. And then the word nevertheless, now put greater
emphasis on what follows: "Thou mayest choose for thyself for it is given unto thee."
Stop and think about that for a minute. What would happen on Mount Sinai if carved into
stone by the finger of God to get wording like thou shalt not kill, nevertheless, thou mayest
choose for thyself, for it is given unto thee, but remember that I forbid it. What just
happened to that command in your mind? Or, thou shalt not commit adultery,
nevertheless thou mayest choose for thyself. It feels like this qualifier to the commandment
where it's putting a greater emphasis on choice, on agency.
You get to decide,
but when you make that decision, know there are going to be consequences. I'm
not taking those consequences away. There will be – there will be some natural things that
happen, but it's your choice, you get to decide. I don't know of any other commandment in all of
scripture anywhere in our entire canon where you get God commanding something in the thou shalt or
the thou shalt not format, where he instantly like right immediately after giving the direct command,
this is the only place in scripture, right here, Moses chapter 3 where I can find a nevertheless
qualifying statement to the commandment. He doesn't seem to do that, which sets
this particular command into a category kind of all by itself and it's going to come
in – into play next week when we talk about that decision that they have to make, knowing
that there are consequences attached to that tree they're still going to make that decision, and
it's fascinating to watch this unfold in chapter 4 as they then interact with the fruit of that tree.
And now, let's look at this next segment. He says in verse 18, "And I the Lord
God said unto mine Only Begotten, that it was not good that the man should be alone;
wherefore, I will make an help meet for him." We often put those two words together and
say them as if it's the same word – helpmeet. We call it helpmate and actually that is
totally incorrect.
The wording there is I'm going to make a help for the man Adam, that
is meet for him, or equal and corresponding, corresponding, complimentary, and it's not –
I love – I love this, that it's not this kind of a relationship where Eve is going to be beneath
him or behind him or over him. A relationship where he has a help that is meet for him and
eet that is not sufficient for his – for exactly what he needs means by implication that he is
exactly what she needs.
That it's this equal, joint partnership, neither the man without
the woman, neither the woman without the man in the Lord. I am going nowhere that
matters without my angel bride Kiplin. She's going nowhere that really matters or
becoming anything in the eternities without me as we move together, and for some people,
that is beautiful doctrine; for others, that's a – that's a difficult doctrine because
they don't have this marriage in this life, and it's painful for people who have either
never been married, or who have been divorced. So we know that life is not easy. Many
of us have been single. Many of us have lost spouses to divorce or to death, and
God knows where we're at.
He understands loss, and he can be with you and support you in
that long night or those long years of suffering. So let's talk about names again. If the
power of names – notice how God sets up this creation story around names, verse 20,
Adam’s given this divine power of naming which gives him responsibility and authority over
these things, but more importantly, identifies their purpose and function.
So in an ancient
Israelite perspective things come into existence when they get a name. But notice that there was no
– nothing that was equal and corresponding to him, that actually had yet been named, and so it's got
to be brought forth, and you get this interesting experience where God puts Adam to sleep and
he takes this rib and from the rib, creates a woman. Now there's been a lot of speculation about
what this all means. It turns out in the ancient Israelite world, most people were illiterate; they
actually would hear the scriptures read to them or sung to them, and the ancient,
inspired, prophetic writers would often use literary special effects to help make the story
more memorable and actually to point out key themes, and names were often the lesson. And
it turns out that the underlying phrase for rib that shows up in other languages in the
surrounding cultures actually means woman or life. So there's actually this word play. How do
you tell people that first of all, a rib, you know, we're equal right here side by
side at the rib, but you – so that's that visual that nobody could miss, but also the
fact that in the ancient languages the word rib was actually the same word for woman or
life, and so it's like this identification that life comes from women and men and women are
equal – equal at the rib.
And ancient readers would have heard this and would have delighted in
the word play and the meaning that woman is the source of life and actually Eve's name in Hebrew
means life, so she is the mother of all living. Yeah, isn't it fascinating as we look back really
quickly to the very last verse of chapter 2, that at the end of all the creation, those
six days of creation, he says, "I, God, saw everything that I had made, and, behold,
all things that I had made were very good; and the evening and the morning were the sixth
day." Not just good like it was on the other days, but very good, and it's only very good
once he's created the man and the woman in verse 27 in the image of God.
Among all
these other things, then it becomes very good. So Moses's story of the creation, it has
set the stage beautifully, this creation, for next week's lesson on the fall which
then sets the stage for subsequent lessons on the infinite atonement, because without the
creation you can't have the fall and without the fall there's no need for an atonement, so
it all winds up beautifully for us, these big pillars of eternity, these big doctrines.
So as we put Moses on hold and flip over to Abraham chapter 4 and 5, let's just point out
a couple of little, significant additions that again, if we're using the theater analogy, this
would be where this particular director and stage manager have put together some – some
unique twists to this story.
One of them right out of the chute, right at the beginning
is the who. Actually who are we talking about? Let me go over that briefly, if you've actually
gone to the theater and you're going to see the same play again, it's interesting that if the
director does things just a little bit different, it catches your attention and
you pay attention and the message registers. But this is always the same story again
and again without any kind of like intent to try to get your attention, you may miss elements of
the instructional purpose of what's happening. Now, so notice as you begin verse 4, or chapter
4 verse 1, "Then the Lord said: let us go down. And they went down at the beginning, and they,
that is the Gods, organized and formed the heavens and the earth." So verse 1, we haven't – we've,
we've just barely gotten into Abraham's account of the creation, his production, his stage play,
so to speak, and you have the element here of the name of God, Elohim, which Joseph Smith makes
a really big deal of towards the end of his life is that this isn't a singular person.
It's plural.
In the Hebrew when you put that – that i m ending, it becomes more than one, and it's the Gods who,
and you'll notice he didn't use the word created as it was in Genesis and Moses, it's
organized. That he formed and organized and formed the heavens and the earth, so they
then organize and form the heavens and the earth. Another one, he talks about this creative
process that kind of denotes less of an event and more of a process; that it took time. How much
time? We have no idea because the scriptures don't give us an exact time-stamp based on what prophets
and apostles, like Elder McConkie earlier that we mentioned, refers to this idea of it's however
much time is needed to accomplish that purpose. Look at verse 18. So here we are at the
ending of day four in the Abraham account and he says, "And the Gods watched those things
which they had ordered until they obeyed." So it's that idea of you don't just
make the command and then walk away; you make the command and you watch until
it's exactly like you want it to be, and then you say, it is good.
It's finished.
What a great principle for parenting, that you don't just give commands
and then walk away. You give commands and you watch until you're obeyed and you work
with and you mold and you shape over time. It's a process. Raising children is
a long process; it's not an event, and discipleship is a process, it's not an event.
You can take the same idea not just with other people but with yourself on the covenant path.
You can watch elements of your soul that you're trying to work with the Lord to refine and to
become who you aren't yet, and you can keep working at those things; it's a noble wrestle;
that you keep working at it until those elements obey.
That's how you form habits that are good.
That's how you learn to play an instrument or learn to play a sport or learn to dance or
learn a new skill is you practice and practice and practice and you mess up until you practice
so much that the elements obey; they – they do what you want them to do without you having
to think about it and put in great effort. Now you'll notice another thing in here,
a phrase that keeps coming up over and over again in Abraham chapter 4 is this
phrase, after his kind, or after their kind. And so you get all of these animals that
are created and the plants that are created. Then you come down in 24 – 25, after their kind,
after their kind, and then you get to verse 26, "And the Gods took counsel among themselves
and said: Let us go down and form man in our image after our likeness." That's in
contrast to this repeating phrase over and over and over again of after their kind or after
its kind.
After what we talked about before, it's just this reiteration that your first views
of the divine are probably going to come to you with little glimpses and little flashes in the
mirror where you see elements of the divine in your countenance and with other people where you
– you see things, you experience things, you feel of God's love and kindness through other people,
and it's this flash. The thing that is so amazing about those experiences isn’t that that person's
amazing; it's that that person is in that moment, in that action, reflecting the divine image of
the likeness and the attributes of God.
In a small way, you're experiencing, you're tasting of
the goodness of God, and sometimes you see it in yourself, many times you see it in other people,
and it's beautiful as that process continues to move forward. It's a process of creation.
So for us, what we're saying is yeah, the creation of the heavens and the earth, it's
amazing and we're not taking anything away from that, but the fact is, is your heavenly
parents are still creating to this day. What are they creating? They're creating more
and more and more of their attributes in you as you continue to move forward on this covenant
path and trust in the Savior. I love that. So here we are on week number 2 of
this new Old Testament study year. Our invitation, as you begin this long journey
of not just study but another year's journey of discipleship on the covenant path, who
knows the struggles, the difficulties and the setbacks that we're going to experience
this year either individually or collectively. As long as we keep our eye focused on the God
who gave us life, the creator of the heavens and the earth, as long as we let him prevail in our
life, it doesn't matter what's coming our way. As long as we're with the Savior and
as long as we stick together in faith, we will move forward, being able to endure
not just to the end, but being able to endure every day to come unto Christ who is the beginning
and the end of all things that are worth having. He lives.
He loves us and he came to save us, and
he's very good at what he does. And we leave that with you in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Know
that you're loved. And spread light and goodness..
