Blogging Through the Book of Mormon

Jesus has called his disciples “friends” and in perhaps an attempt to increase their self-confidence he says, “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you.” This is one of those statements that I have a difficult time understanding because they way I read it makes it seem like He’s saying that their personal righteousness or decisions had no impact on their call to the apostleship, and we know that’s not true. When Jesus called these men to follow him, they were spiritually prepared, meaning that they had spent considerable time in prayer and in the scriptures, they were aware enough to be looking for the Messiah and worthy enough to feel the Spirit when Jesus approached them. But what if they were righteous but not willing to give up their lives and families to follow this strange guy around, would Jesus have insisted that they come with him? Of course not, that’s kidnapping. And what if they had chosen to follow Jesus, but...

I’m reading this last discourse that Jesus gives to His disciples as he’s walking toward destiny, and I can’t help but think of what I would want my last words to be if I knew I was walking to my death. One time I was the nursery leader and I had about 5 kids in there, and then I had to suddenly move and on my last Sunday there I gave my “last words” to the kids, even though I’m sure they had no idea what I was talking about. I said basically to always stay in the Church, always keep the commandments, always read the scriptures and to love Jesus. I feel like this is kind of a similar thing that Jesus is doing here, giving his last bits of wisdom to people he loved and to whom he knew horror and hardship was coming. Keeping with the concept of “abiding” that we talked about yesterday, Jesus says, “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love.” ...

Jesus has concluded the upper room portion of the evening and begins walking to the Mount of Olives with his remaining disciples. On the way there, he continues teaching them, and begins with an analogy saying, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman… I am the vine, ye are the  branches: He that adibeth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.” The seven verses that talked about the vines and branches were pretty repetitive I feel, but the vineyard analogy is very prominent throughout all scripture and probably made a lot of sense, especially to the people of ancient time. But the idea is pretty straight forward and can be easily understood even my city folk in our day. The IM says, “Elder James E Talmage of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles explained h...

Jesus continues, "if ye love me, keep my commandments." This has always been a difficult concept for me because for the vast majority of my life, I didn't love God so I needed another form of motivation for being obedient, and honestly, because I didn't have any other reason, I didn't keep the commandments. Having some distance from that belief, I can now see how this statement could appeal to both sides of people. If you genuinely have an innate love of God, which many people do, regardless of their native religion, then you want to follow the rules that your God has set forth because you believe that it is in your best interest. On the other side though, for those who do not automatically love their God, we could use the inverse. Instead of "if you love me, keep my commandments," it's also true, "if you keep my commandments, you will love me." This is a horse/carriage situation because do you keep the commandments because you love God or ...

Jesus makes a very interesting statement that I had never caught before, saying, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.” It sounds like Jesus is saying that those who believe on Him will have power to perform miracles that are even greater than the miracles that Jesus performed Himself. That statement has a lot of implications. First, it demonstrates Jesus’ modesty. He doesn’t need to have everyone know that He’s the biggest and the best and the most important, he wants other people to feel just as empowered. He knows that people are strengthened when they are able to access God’s power and he wants others to have that spiritually building experience. Imagine you’re a student or lower level employee, and your teacher/boss comes to you and says, “one day you’ll be able to do everything that I can do.”...

There are several verses that Jesus talks about His relationship with the Father. I had an interesting learning experience yesterday. I went to a temple dedication for a while before I got called in to work, and before I went I watched on the Mormon channel some Church discussions about temples and one of the major themes that kept coming up was vicarious works, even during the temple dedication. They said that Jesus performed the ultimate vicarious act during the atonement, he did for us what we can’t do for ourselves. One of the points someone made was that Jesus’ mortal ministry was a vicarious work for Heavenly Father. They said that the Savior came down as a representative for Heavenly Father and did everything so that we could know the Father through the Son. I thought that that was an interesting analogy.   Philip asks the Lord “shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us.” Heavenly Father didn’t appear, but Jesus taught His disciples that ...

Maybe to comfort Peter who had just been told that he would thrice deny Jesus in the next few hours, Jesus tells his disciples, “Let not your  heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in my. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.” This does give the disciples the advantage of the eternal perspective. A tough time is ahead of them, and remembering that rewards and rest are coming to them will be helpful. It is a little bit discomfiting to imagine us down here suffering and Jesus playing architect in heaven, but I don’t think that that’s what he meant. The concept of Jesus dying within the next 24 hours is still not sinking in for them and Thomas asks how they can know the way if they don’t know where He is going. Jesus answers, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” This is a pretty abstract statement, so ...

Apparently Peter didn’t take too kindly to the implication that he was not truly converted because he responds saying, “Lord, I am ready to go with thee, both into prison, and to death.” That’s a pretty bold statement and I’m sure that he meant it at the time, and if he had not had this conversation with the Savior before hand, I think that when the officers showed up to arrest Him, Peter would indeed have followed Him to prison and to death. I always thought that because Peter didn’t die with Jesus, leading the church afterwards was God’s fall back plan for him. But the more I think about how this all went down, I realize that Peter was meant to lead the church afterward, it was always supposed to be him, it wasn’t a back up plan, it was always the only plan. I think that Peter did deny the Savior because he was afraid of being crucified as well, but I honestly don’t think that denial would have been his initial gut reaction. Jesu...

I ’m having a problem understanding the exact timeline for the night that began the atonement, so I’m just going to do my best, try to cover everything and hope that it all makes sense in the end. The Passover meal had been eaten, Jesus had washed His disciples’ feet, Judas has been sent away, and the sacrament has been instituted, it’s been a busy night, not knowing that it was his last one with His disciples in this capacity, Jesus tried to make the most of it. Matthew tells us that Jesus ended the formal night when “they had sung an hymn.” My brother figured out that “an” was the correct usage for things like “hymn” and “prayer” etc. so now whenever we get together he says, “now we’ll sing an hymn” or “we’ll say an prayer” it’s just funny and brings the scriptures to life. The IM says, “The ‘hymn’ the Savior and His disciples sang at the conclusion of ...

The institution of the sacrament is only a few short verses, but there is so much more that goes into it. If we were to take our religion straight from the Bible, it would be easy to put minimal emphasis on the sacrament because the Sermon on the Mount took up 3 chapters, and the sacrament only takes up a few verses, so volume wise, it would be easy to discount its importance. The first point about the sacrament comes courtesy of my son, who asked, “why do we always do the bread first?” The IM quotes Elder Jeffrey R. Holland as teaching, “With a crust of bread, always broken, blessed, and offered first, we remember his bruised body and broken heart, his physical suffering on the cross where he cried, ‘I thirst,’ and finally, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ The Savior’s physical suffering guarantees that through his mercy and grace every member of the human family shall be freed from the bonds of death and be resurrected triump...

They had finished eating the Passover meal, Jesus had washed their feet, dismissed Judas, and given the “New Commandment,” to love each other has he loved them. Now “Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, Eat; this is my body. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.” Looking at the few simple verses recording what happens, it’s difficult to accept that this why we take the sacrament every week, it seems like there is so much effort put into a practice that is supported by very few words. The IM says, “The Joseph Smith Translation clarified that the Savior commanded his disciples to continue to perform the ordinance of the sacrament. These verses also make clear that one purpose of the sacrament is to provide the opportunity for the Savior’s followers t...

Again, I’m not quite sure on the exact sequence of events, but at some point the disciples have a disagreement which one of them is the greatest. Thinking about it, it probably happened while Judas was still there because the spirit of contention was strong with him and if there was going to be a fight it probably would have been then. It would also make sense, though, that the disagreement arose when Jesus started talking about His upcoming death and the disciples freaked out a little bit about who would lead carrying on the work. Because Jesus cited Him being their servant, the context of already having washed their feet would have been there. But on the other hand, it also would have made sense that Jesus washed their feet because of their dispute and wanted to make a very important point to them. So I don’t know where it falls on the timeline for the evening, but ultimately Jesus replies with what he’s said every single time before, “but he that is greatest a...

It seems that even Judas’ presence in the room with Jesus and the rest of the disciples was distracting enough to halt any spiritual growth there. It’s kind of like when Joseph Smith, Martin Harris, Oliver Cowdery, and David Whitmer were had been chosen by God to see the gold plates and when they went to the forest and prayed as instructed, nothing happened until Martin Harris recognized that it was his presence there that was withholding the Spirit. Once he left, then the angel came and showed all that stuff to the remaining three. Judas’ murderous heart impeded the teachings that the Lord had planned for them, but now that he was gone Jesus could move his teachings forward. Interestingly, I had briefly read what was coming up for today yesterday and saw that the topic of the “new commandment” was on the agenda. Listening to the most recent general conference talk this morning on my way to work, I heard Elder Jeffrey R. Holland discuss the changes to Hom...

Having just washed the feet of all the disciples, Jesus was “troubled in spirit” because he knew that he was going to be betrayed. This seemed like an awkward transition of subjects but then I realized that perhaps Jesus had just finished washing the feet of Judas Iscariot. Judas might have been sitting the furthest away from the Savior, or Jesus might have just saved him for last, or maybe he wasn’t last at all. Jesus could stop the arrest and crucifixion at any time, he didn’t need Judas to tell them where he was, he could have turned himself in, I mean, as much as Judas is demonized, his participation in the murder of Jesus was completely unnecessary, it would have happened no matter what. Because only John recorded Jesus washing the disciples’ feet, I’m not really sure exactly where the betrayal conversation fits in, but the IM timeline says that Jesus brings up the topic after washing their feet, and really, that makes sense because what better...