“Why The Lord Wants Us To Be a ‘Peculiar Treasure,’” Come, Follow Me Podcast #17 — Exodus 18-20
Scot
Welcome to Meridian Magazine’s Come, Follow Me Podcast. We’re Scot and Maurine Proctor and we’re thrilled to be with you again this week as we discuss Exodus 18-20; a very important and wonderful part of the Old Testament. Now, as you’ve been seeing, we have some special guests that we have invited to be with us in these podcasts and we welcome another one this week that we think you’ll be very excited to have join us.
Maurine
Kerry Muhlestein is one our favorites because we love his books so much. He’s written many, but we have favorites. We love God Will Prevail, which is all about the covenant and the Old Testament and of course, a new one he’s written about the Book of Abraham called Let’s Talk About the Book of Abraham. He is an Egyptologist, a professor at BYU, but most of all we are impressed with his passion to make what people consider the hard things of the Old Testament, easier. So, welcome Kerry, we’re so glad you’re with us.
Kerry
Thank you, it’s wonderful to be with you.
Maurine
So today we’re going to talk a lot about the initial experiences at Sinai, but chapter 18 gives us a little lesson in leadership, which we want to talk about for a minute. Kerry, tell us about that.
Kerry
Well, I love chapter 18 because you see Moses, who is in the midst of becoming this great prophet and yet still learning and being tutored and being willing to be tutored, in this case by his father-in-law, who is the one who ordained him to the priesthood. As Jethro comes and sees Moses with this huge congregation, he sees that he’s trying to hear everything going on and take care of everything himself and it’s just not working. It’s wearing him out, it’s inefficient, not everything is getting done. So, he has some advice for Moses about delegating and spreading things out, in terms of stewardship and letting other people be part of the governing process of Israel.
Maurine
What strikes me about this is that stewardship seems to be a really important part of the covenant and has a reason behind it. The Lord seems to give us stewardships so that we have these experiences in carrying part of the joy and responsibility of spreading the covenant. So, we all end with stewardship responsibilities, which are meant to not only help in spreading the work, but are meant to transform us.
Kerry
I agree. It’s a wonderful part of the covenant. I love that you tied it into the covenant. The covenant has these kind of two aspects; this vertical aspect that’s about our relationship with God, and then this horizontal aspect where we also have a covenant relationship with each other. When God delegates to us, and really that’s what’s happening—whether it’s Moses with the house of Israel or the Church as it exists today—God is delegating His work to people here on earth. So, let’s say that you’re the Relief Society president, then God is giving you the job to represent Him to all of these people.
So, your vertical component with God then gets spread out on that horizontal component with everybody else, so that you are to represent God to them and treat them the way God would treat them, and feel about them the way that God would feel about them. This becomes really a covenant responsibility that we have. The way that it’s described to Moses here very much echoes what we think of in terms of Church councils; that everything is done by council. And what a wonderful thing that it’s not just one person that has to do everything, but instead we council together and then we delegate, and everyone has a turn. You may be the Relief Society president today and you’re a ministering sister tomorrow, and someone else is the Relief Society President. We all take those covenant opportunities to bless each other’s lives and heighten our relationship with God.
Scot
And I think it’s interesting, Kerry and Maurine, that Jethro is very specific and he says, “Hearken to my counsel”, ‘listen with the intent to obey, Moses, because I love you and I want you to not be overwhelmed by what you’re doing, because you’re really not doing this right.’ He says, ‘find some great men among you and make some rulers of thousand, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties and rulers of tens’ (see Exodus 18:21). And this kind of reminds me of Stake Presidents, Bishops, Elders Quorum Presidents, Relief Society Presidents, and Deacons Quorum Presidents; in that order, with those numbers. It’s the same kind of thing, we’re still under that covenant relationship of stewardship.
Kerry
Absolutely.
Maurine
I think it’s interesting too, the way there would be rulers of thousands and rulers of hundreds, rules of fifties, rulers of tens; it kind of reminds me of the way the Latter-day Saints crossed the plains. We seem to be using this covenant idea and this delegation from the beginning, which is a fascinating thing to me.
Kerry
Yeah, I think you can see that Brigham Young had read this chapter and took it pretty seriously.
Maurine
And needed to. I think that was an exhausting job that he was given, as are many of our stewardships. I think the Lord doesn’t always ask us to do easy things. Parenting is not always an easy thing, but what an incredible schooling and transformative experience it is for us as we go through that.
Kerry
I don’t know that He ever asks us to do easy things. What’s the point in that, right? He’s always going to ask us to do difficult things, that’s what’s going to stretch us.
Scot
That’s right. Now, Kerry, I have a question for you; the Lord says an interesting thing in the first part of chapter 19, He says that ‘you’ve seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bear you on eagles’ wings and brought you unto myself’. Do you have any thoughts about this ‘bear you on eagles’ wings’? Because Isaiah uses that same kind of language later and I love that concept.
Kerry
I love the phrase, and it does seem like Isaiah is intentionally borrowing from it here to give us—and they’re both drawing on imagery that is fantastic. The Lord is saying, ‘look what I’ve done to the Egyptians,’ and He has specifically set up things, in terms of the plagues, and the deliverance from Egypt to demonstrate to Israel; to Egypt; and all the world, that He was the one who was really God. Not Pharaoh, not pharaoh’s gods, not anyone else; that God is God and He’s the one with power.
That message seems to have been received loud and clear by the Israelites, although they will forget from time to time; by the Canaanites, and by others. So, he’s reminding them of that and He’s going to remind them frequently because they do forget, but He also wants to do it in a way that they understand, because of this covenant relationship that they have; that the way He has taken care of them, He will continue to take care of them. So, this phrase is beautiful. What more could you want, If you’re going to go across this terrible desert, then to be carried on eagles’ wings? It’s just a beautiful phrase. And this notion, the idea of the deliverance, will become the thing that God and his prophet’s remind Israel of again and again and again. Whenever they doubt, whenever they’re wondering, whenever they’re wavering; He says, ‘remember how I delivered you in Egypt’, and that becomes the symbol of deliverance par excellence.
Maurine
I think it’s really interesting that He says very specifically what He wants to do with Israel. He wants to make a covenant with them and make them to be a peculiar treasure. So, this God of high expectations also is a God who has the power to make us new people. What is He about here? And what is the Lord thinking He can accomplish through the covenant in this instance?
Kerry
That’s a great question. I talk quite a bit about this in my book, God Will Prevail, but the idea is that the purpose of the covenant is to help us become transformed. To become the kind of people that are capable of a closer relationship with God. The ultimate expression of that will be for us to become Christlike or godly, so that we can have a full communion with Him. But of course, there will be steps along the way. We don’t become Christlike overnight. So, that’s really the purpose of the covenant; to change us, to give us access to the transformative power of Christ’s atoning sacrifice, so that we can be changed.
As we even start into that, just initially when we enter into the covenant—and that could be Israel at Mt. Sinai or us at the baptismal font—immediately, there are changes that come and that will make us, as you said in verse 5, “then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine”. Now this Hebrew word segullah here, it means something that is valuable because it’s rare. So, that’s why we’ve put the ‘peculiar’ and the ‘treasure’ in there. And that’s usually how, in terms of commodities, that’s what determines something’s worth. The more rare it is, the more value it has. So, that’s what God is trying to say really, is that He wants us to be different than everyone else. We’re not supposed to be the same as the world. We have this desire to fit in, we have this desire to be like everybody else. It’s kind of fun watching teenagers because they both want to be individual and unique and yet they also want to be like everyone else at the same time. I say it about teenagers, but it turns out to be true of all of us in many ways. And God is telling us, ‘No, don’t be worldly. Don’t be like the world, I want you to be like me. I want you to be godly.’
So, that’s going to happen in two ways, ‘1) I’m giving you a set of ways to act, a set of commandments.’ That’s the primary obligation under the law, is to keep the commandments. So, that’s the way that we need to act. But the covenant itself gives us access to the transformative power of the atonement of Christ, that will change who we are. So, both of those things come together to change who we are and thus we are more godly, less worldly, which makes us a peculiar treasure. Different than everyone else and more godly, so that we become so precious in God’s sight because the relationship is heightened. And in some ways, that sums up what the covenant is all about in a nutshell; this idea that we become a peculiar treasure to God.
Scot
Now, Kerry, we’ve all been to the Sinai a number of times and I’m sure have hiked the traditional Mount Sinai; why would God bring his people into such difficult circumstances and then have them camp before this mountain? Moses goes up and there’s all of this fire and smoke and everything, and Moses is meeting with God face to face, as one friend meets with another—what is this for us now, that we come to this mountain? Is this a temple? What’s going on here? And bring us to Sinai, because you’ve been there many times.
Kerry
I think there’s a decent chance that the traditional Sinai is the right spot, but if not, it’s got to be something somewhat similar. I think it’s absolutely a temple setting. The symbolism is the same, in fact, temples are really recreations of holy mountains so typologically the temple is a holy mountain. So, maybe instead of us saying Mount Sinai is a temple, we can say temples are Mount Sinai. What it is, is it brings Israel away from the world, away from everything else. I think it’s intentional. It’s not an easy path, it’s not a place where they can survive on their own. They have to rely on God to survive here. That’s part of the purpose because, in the end, if we’re going to be exalted, we have to rely on God. It’s not terrain we can traverse on our own. It’s not a journey we can survive on our own. So, what’s happening physically/literally is also a symbolic journey. That’s the beauty of the Old Testament, there are so many things that happen literally, but they’re always symbolic. And sometimes we don’t know if it’s literal or not, but it’s always symbolic.
So, they’re being brought out of the world, learning to rely only on God, so that they can come to this place where the symbolism of temples, steeples, mountains, altars; all of this is that if the world is the flat thing down below and heaven is up above, you need something that will connect you. So, a mountain connects you with heaven; a steeple does; an altar does. It’s that symbolic connection with God.
So, they come to this mountain that can raise them up closer to being with God and God wants to come down. That’s the fantastic symbolism. So, for example, in Egyptian temples, as you get further and further in the temple, closer and closer to the holiest space, you keep ascending up, but the ceiling keeps coming down. So, by the time you get to the holy place where the statue of the God was, there’s not a lot of room between the floor and the ceiling. You’ve come toward God, he’s come towards you.
That’s what’s happening at Mount Sinai is that Israel has come up, relying on God, through the wilderness, out of the world, and God is going to come down to Sinai. He wants for everyone to see Him. His goal is for everyone in Israel to come and see Him and be in His presence face to face. That’s what He wants and that’s what He promises He can make happen; that they can see Him.
They have to prepare, to begin with. They’re told to wash themselves. They set a boundary so they don’t come into the sacred place before they’re ready. They do all these things to try and prepare themselves and, in the meantime, they see that God is preparing Himself to come down. There’s light and thunder and all sorts of stuff up on the mountain and so they’re all getting ready for this actual meeting that then they don’t go through with, which is the sad tragedy of the Sinai experience. Israel has this opportunity, then they choose not to do it.
Maurine
The idea of a peculiar people is really part of the covenant notion, but it is difficult for some people to hear that in a world we live in that talks about equality for all, and should there be some who have a closer relationship with God. Do you want to discuss that a little bit?
Kerry
Yeah, that’s really worth thinking about because really it is equality. Remember, part of the obligation of the covenant is to carry the covenant to everyone else. You don’t get that in the Old Testament. You have to read the Book of Abraham to get that aspect of it. I think that Satan was successful in getting it taken out. But that’s part of the covenant, part of the purpose of the House of Israel is that we need to take the covenant to the entire world. President Nelson has been fairly emphatic about that. And it’s not just to the entire world on this side of the veil, it’s to everyone who’s ever been on the world on either side of the veil.
Everyone is not only invited, but encouraged, begged and pled with to be a part of this covenant. God wants to have a closer relationship with all of His children, you have to self-select out of it. Anyone can be part of the house of Israel. Now, it doesn’t turn out that way practically in this story because sometimes the Israelites forgot that that’s how it was supposed to happen and they became fairly elitist at times and non-inclusive. They lost sight of that, but what it’s supposed to be is that everyone can be part of the covenant and you only aren’t if you choose not to be, because we’re trying to get you to be. I think that’s worth thinking about. First of all, God wants all of Israel to come into His presence and then—it’s ties in with chapter 18 beautifully—He’s going to bring all of Israel into His presence and then He’s going to send them out to get everybody else to join the covenant and come into His presence.
So, he’s delegating. He’s going to have Moses send out some people and they’ll send out other people and they’ll send out other people. The way Christ does it is he gets apostles and they send out people and there are seventy and they get sent forth. We’re seeing the same thing happening today. But in the end, everyone is invited to come. The question is whether you will come or not. In this story, even Israel chose to not fully come.
They hear the lightning and the thunder. We get in chapter 20—and we miss this often, you have to read the Deuteronomy version. In Deuteronomy chapter 5, it becomes clear that they all hear God giving the ten commandments. It isn’t just Moses, everyone hears God’s voice. They know who’s up there. They know what’s going on. God teaches them to get ready for this. But at the end, we get in Exodus 20:18, “And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off.” It’s overwhelming to them. This is scary to them.
“And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die.” So, you see their fear. To me there’s something really profound and instructive about this. Their fear is that they can’t come into God’s presence and survive. Now that’s a reasonable fear. Because if God doesn’t change your nature, that ends up being true. You can’t survive God’s presence in your fallen, sinful state. It just isn’t going to happen. But God has told them that He will bring them into His presence. So, what you have to believe is that God has the ability and the desire to change you, to transform you so you can come into his presence and then step forward in faith. Knowing that as you start to step forward, you are not worthy, but believing that as you finish that step, God will change you and save you.
Israel is too full of fear and not full of faith enough to make the step; to trust that God will change them. They say instead, ‘Moses, you go talk with God. We’ll stay back here. You be the intermediary.’ And Joseph Smith tells us that this is the reason that they get the lower law. I think that the calf has something to do with, but that this is the primary reason that they get the lower law; because they refuse to come to God’s presence when God invited them to come into His presence and when he was ready to. And I think it has to do with this lack of trust in the transforming power of Christ and his atoning sacrifice, which is something that we still struggle with mightily today. Modern Israel still—we see our own flaws, we see how good everyone else is, we see how good God is and we believe that God can save other people, but when we look at our own shortcomings, our own lack of perfection; we start to struggle to believe that He can save us and change us and start to bring us into His presence.
Which means we are not different from our Israelite ancestors. We have the same struggles and the same answer is to trust when He says to them, “Fear Not”, which is what He says to them here. “Fear not”, we just have to eject our fear, give into our faith, and take that step and follow God.
Scot
You as you’re talking, Kerry, it reminds me of the whole setting in the premortal world when there’s this grand council and god is really trying to see if they will do all things whatsoever god commands them and he’s going to give them these commandments, which Moses comes down with.
Maurine
Why do you think it’s so hard for us to trust the Lord? Why is that such a difficult journey? Fear and trust seem to be pulling us in different directions simultaneously. We want to trust the Lord, but sometimes that’s difficult.
Kerry
I agree. I can’t profess to understand all the reasons different people struggle with it, but I think there are a couple of things that are fundamental that we all struggle with and one of them is that we’re very aware of our own shortcomings, right? I know my own faults better than anybody. And I know that, not only is sometimes that I didn’t do as well as I should have, but it’s sometimes that I didn’t want to do well at that moment. We know our motives better than anyone else does and knowing that, it’s hard to believe that a prefect being would say, “it’s ok, I got you covered on that”. Really, the word “to atone” means to cover. That’s what he’s saying is, “I’ve got you covered”, it’s hard to also believe that someone has the ability to change us when we’re not working as hard—no one is working as hard as they should at changing themselves, nobody at all. Since we know that about ourselves, it’s hard to believe that someone else can and would change us. But that’s what we have to do, we have to believe it. And that’s part of why God is going to keep reminding them if the exodus story, to say, ‘do you remember when it seemed absolutely impossible that you could come out of Egypt? And do you remember when the largest, most powerful army in the world was coming down on you and it seemed like it was impossible to escape? And then do you remember that I delivered you in ways that you could’ve never imagined and that seemed impossible? If I could do that, if I could split the Red Sea, breathe fire down to stop to Egyptian army and bring you through on dry ground, I can change your little old self.
One of the things I like to tell my students is, you’re not a match for the atonement. You may feel like your sins are going to overpower the atonement, but they’re not. You’re not good enough, quit being that prideful. You’re not good enough at sinning to be more powerful than the atoning sacrifice of Christ is. Christ really, really can change us. Sometimes it’s hard to feel and sometimes it’s hard to believe, but we just have to look at the history—this salvation history we could call it—the history of Him saving and then we can believe that if he can do that, he can change me.
Scot
Thinking about what you just said, I’m thinking about this first commandment the Lord gives, of the ten. There are many other commandments, but of these ten, the big ones, “thou shalt have no other gods before me”. And right before that he says, ‘I’m the God who brought you out of Egypt’. So, there is some tie to Egypt here, this is a people who’ve been in Egypt for generations. So, describe why this is such an important commandment to begin with.
Kerry
Yeah, and it becomes clear from what Joshua says and some other things that Israel has picked up some idolatrous practices while in Egypt. In fact, I’m not sure they’d ever fully gotten rid of them.
We’ve got Rachel and Leah coming down from Syria, from Laban’s household, where they were idolatrous and Rachel’s bringing idols with her. It’s clear they’ve come to worship Jehovah, I don’t know if they ever fully stopped worshipping other gods and worshipped only Jehovah. When Jacob takes his family to Bethel, the first thing he says is, ‘can we please get rid of these gods? We really need to get all these little gods and get them gone’. And he buries them under a tree. So, maybe he successful at that point and when they go down into Egypt, there’s no idolatry, but I kind of think that some of his children were probably still struggling with idolatry a little bit.
Whether they were or not, it’s pretty clear that in Egypt, where there’s idolatry ahoy—however much you can think of idolatry, it’s there, hundreds and hundreds of gods to choose from, they seem to have picked this up. So, as they’re coming out, God is telling them, you’ve got to get rid of this. And it almost seems to me like he’s taking them where they are, and taking them another step. I’m not sure of this, but it feels like when he’s saying, ‘don’t have other gods before me’ that this could be taken two ways and it’s probably intentionally two ways. One way is, right now you believe in lots of gods, let’s start with worshipping me and not anyone else. And eventually that becomes worship me because there isn’t anyone else. We know there aren’t really any other gods, but it seems like it’s stated in a way that it can take the Israelites where they are and take them to where they need to be.
Maurine
It seems to me that this is reinforced in the idea that God says he’s a jealous God, what does jealous mean there? I’m struck that the reason God gives this commandment is that no other god, or no other idea of God can possibly save you. No other god or idea of God can possibly transform you. No other god, because there is no other god, can comfort you. And so, this is such a commandment for our well being; not about worshipping me because I need your attention or I’m a glory monger or something like that. God is nothing like that.
He is this God who wants to give us gifts, if we will not worship other gods. And I think that we think that we personally, in our society today, are free of idolatry, because we don’t have little images in our home that we bow to, but I think that whatever we hold as the most important thing in our life becomes a kind of god to us. So, I’m just interested in your reflection on that.
Kerry
This is a really important point, so let’s first of all start out with this idea that we are clearly idolatrous today. There’s no doubt about it. The idols have changed, but only in some ways. It’s really still whatever the world is telling us, we should look to. So that’s why the Israelites were turning to Ra or whatever god they were turning to, later it’s Ba’al and so on. It’s because the world is telling them, well that’s where you should turn and look for value, for safety or whatever else, that’s where you should turn. So today, the world is telling us different things. It’s telling us power and prestige, we have all these social ideas. I think that actually the greatest idol that Latter-day Saints are struggling with today is that they have learned to think about things the way the world has taught them to think about things. So, when it comes to social issues or all sorts of other issues of identity or what’s valuable or what’s important, we let the world tell us how to think about these things and then when a prophet says something different, we’re really quite bothered by it. Well, that’s because the world’s way of thinking has become our idol.
And it’s interesting what you said, Maurine, about how the reason God wants us to. Or worship anything else is because nothing else will save us. This takes us all the way back to the idea of the Abrahamic sacrifice. I believe the reason Abraham had to go through an Abrahamic sacrifice, and the reason all of us will is because if there is something we love more than God, than we will trust in that more than God and look to it more than God, but nothing else can save us.
So, I’ve often said, as good as my wife is for me—and she absolutely is good for me, she makes me a better person, she helps me come to God—as good as she is for me, she can’t save me. I know she’d like to, but we both know she can’t. Only God can save me. So if I love even my wife more than God, I’m not going to be saved. Not because God needs me to love him more, but because whatever I love more, I trust in more and I’ll be trusting in the wrong thing and I won’t be saved.
So, that whole idea of the Abrahamic sacrifice ties into this first commandment; the idea that we love God more than anything else. So, we worship God and God only because only God can save us and you better be ready to jettison everything else because that’s the only way to be saved.
Scot
I think that this whole idea of this jealous God is interesting because we always take that as a negative, but that Hebrew word, is it pronounced Qannah? And it means possessing sensitive and deep feelings. ‘I’m a sensitive God. I have deep feelings. I am one who possesses the deepest of feelings for you. So, instead of taking it so negatively, that He’s jealous the way we have kind of underlined jealous as a negative quality, I think there’s something about this that we can learn that’s He’s actually a pretty amazing God.
Kerry
I absolutely agree with you, but it has this element in it that we should not—again, we’re letting the world determine how we think—so, we’re assigning meaning to this that shouldn’t be assigned. I think we could say it this way; God is saying, ‘I love you more than anything else. And I want you to love me more than anything else. And again, there’s a reason for that. It’s not because He’s just so in need of love, it’s because if we don’t live Him more than anything else, He can’t save us. But that is what it means; don’t love something more than me. That causes me and you to have a problem. So, it is jealous in those terms, that he doesn’t want us to love something else. And it is also what you’re saying, it comes from this strong and deep love that He has for us. And that He knows we need to have for Him if we are going to be saved.
Maurine
It seems to me that the commandment that we should not take the Lord’s name in vain is also much larger than we sometimes think of it. We think of it as swearing, and it’s much bigger, I think. What would you respond to that?
Kerry
Yeah, I would agree. I mean really what He’s saying is, don’t take it in emptiness. So, don’t take it and use my name in a way that has no power or authority behind it. So, that means all sorts of things. It’s not just not taking His name in vain. I try and think about who I’m talking about—you’ll find I don’t use the word ‘Jesus’ very much. I know some people just throw it out there all the time and I’m not saying that that’s wrong. But for me, at least, I’m not going to say that name without thinking about and trying to feel deeply about it. Because I don’t want it to be an emptiness. But I’m also not going to bear testimony without closing in that name, without thinking about what it means. I certainly don’t want to give a prayer or a blessing unworthily or without that real power behind it.
I think it means, don’t do this in the way the world does it. Do this with me really behind it.
Maurine
I think it’s really interesting; when we’re in a rush, we get to the end of our prayer and then just really quickly say, “in the name…” and it just is—what we’re doing with the prayer is we’re putting Christ’s atonement really upon it. He is the advocate before the Father for us. And we just flip that phrase out without even thinking, and it’s a huge phrase. It means so much, it’s so sacred.
Kerry
I agree. I very much agree. Actually one of the commandments, the idea of the Sabbath day, ties in with so many things that we’re talking about. And I think we’re seeing President Nelson emphasize this. We’ve had, for a few years, the emphasis on keep the Sabbath day holy. And then President Nelson’s talk Let God Prevail and done remarks he gave in the October 2021 conference, at the very end where he says, ‘please set aside more time for Christ. Less input from the world, more input from Christ’. That’s really what the Sabbath day is about, if you put the idea of, we are bombarded by the ideas of the world, that’s the idolatry part they were talking about. We’re bombarded by the ideas of the world so much, have some days where you unplug from that and plug more into Christ. Because if you do not, there’s no way you could make it so that you’d love God more than everything else; that God is influencing you more or prevailing in your life more. You have to give Him some time where you’re not doing the world, you’re doing Him. You’re being godly. Or else the world is going to win and you’ll be worshipping its way of thinking more than you worship God.
Maurine
I remember talking to a mission President once who said he was so busy in his calling, the cell phone rang constantly. There was always a line-up to see him that he finally decided that he would take a couple of hours a day, which is kind of like taking the Sabbath, to pray and to think about the mission. Because he felt like he was responding to fires so much, he didn’t want to lose his way, in terms of getting the Lord’s direction and the Lord’s connection.
Kerry
Yeah, and I think we all need to do it not just on the Sabbath, but every day, which is what President Nelson was asking us to do in those closing remarks at this last conference, he was asking us to make that happen daily. I can’t agree more.
Scot
I think it’s interesting, as we come to a conclusion of this particular episode, that these Ten Commandments permeate all the scriptures. They’re not just once in the Old Testament. They’re in all of the standard works, essentially. Even Abinadi brings them before wicked King Noah and they’re, of course, repeated in the law of the Church in our dispensation. And the Lord must feel pretty strongly about these basic ways to live.
Kerry
I agree. And you’ve probably heard this before, but this idea that the first several commandments are about our relationship with God; that we worship Him and not any other gods, that we keep the Sabbath day holy, and so on. And then we get, starting in verse 12 of chapter 20, commandments that are about other people and our relationship with other people; honor thy father and thy mother, not killing, not committing adultery, not stealing and so on. And so, in the end, they really are about the two great commandments, it’s really about loving God and loving each other or that covenant relationship that we talked about. And covenant is woven in here more than you might recognize or realize.
So, for example, if we just look at the commandment to honor thy father and thy mother; “honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God has given thee.” Well, when did he give us the land? That’s the covenant. He’s saying, ‘you can have the full blessings of the covenant’. We can very accurately reread that to say, ‘honor thy father and thy mother, that you can receive all of the covenant blessings, which I have promised you.
And so covenant is woven in here in a number of ways, but I think the most important way is the emphasis on loving God and loving each other, so that we have this transforming power in our vertical and our horizontal relationships.
Maurine
And we know that the Lord intended to give a bigger covenant Israel than He finally does. But if we lived the Ten Commandments alone, the entire world, its history, its civilization would be so different. We have ailed in this world because we didn’t keep these commandments.
Scot
Well, it’s hard to bring this to an end, but we’re excited that we’re going to have you next week as well, Kerry, thank you for your time today. We’ve learned a great deal, we hope you, as our dear listeners, have also learned a great deal. We’re grateful to Paul Cardall for the music which accompanies this podcast and to our producer, Michaela Proctor Hutchins.
Next week we’ll be studying Exodus 24 and 31-34 and we’re excited to see you then. Have a great week and see you next time.
The post “Why The Lord Wants Us To Be a ‘Peculiar Treasure,’” Come, Follow Me Podcast #17 — Exodus 18-20 first appeared on Meridian Magazine.
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