Transcript 0:00 Welcome to Scripture Insights. I'm Taylor Halverson. And I'm Mike Harris. Today, we'll be discussing First Nephi one through five. 0:08 Some of the themes we'll be exploring is God's mercy, even in the face of affliction, that he delivers the faithful. 0:15 We'll talk about the importance of following the prophetic word and being guided by the Spirit, and we'll also look at what are the outcomes and consequences of faithfulness to God. 0:26 So as we jump right into First Nephi chapter one, this may be the most read verse anywhere in the Book of Mormon, 'cause people get started reading the Book of Mormon and somewhere in 2 Nephi start to lose a little bit of steam. 0:38 Mm. We'll get to Isaiah later and we're gonna love it. But it's an interesting beginning. He starts with, "I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents." And 0:49 ancient writing, it was not typical to have a first person narrative. It wasn't, uh, it wasn't like it never happened, but this is interesting. 0:59 If you look at other ancient narratives, most narratives are in the third person. 1:04 Some are in the first person, and often when they're in the first person in the ancient Middle East, the intention is to reinforce to the reader that the narrative is trustworthy, that the individual who's giving you the record is somebody that you can believe and trust. 1:23 And this is what we have with Nephi right now. And he talks about his goodly parents, which might suggest something about their education, their resources, their social standing, 1:35 and there might even be a bit of a word play going on because Nephi's name likely means, in the Egyptian, something like good, fair, or desirable. 1:46 And so he's saying, "I, Nephi, having been born of Nephi parents," or goodly parents. Mm. 1:51 So one of the themes to look for throughout Nephi's writings is things that are good, fair, and desirable, and of course, that all centers on God. 2:01 For example, when he sees his own vision of the tree of life, he spends a lot of time describing how desirable the fruit or the atonement is, and likely the word he would've used in the underlying Egyptian would've been something like Nephi. 2:15 Wow. So there's all sorts of interesting things that are going on here in the text. But as we continue with this verse, he says things like, "And having seen many afflictions in the course of my days." 2:28 And we were talking, before we turned the cameras on, about this very, uh, this very word here, afflictions. Now, he writes this when, Taylor? 2:37 So at this point he's probably 20, 30, 40 years after they've left the land of Israel. So he's had a long life. Let's suppose he leaves at age 16, and now he's maybe 50 years of age, and he's writing this. 2:51 And he says he's had many afflictions. Yeah. L- uh, quickly, let's just name some of the afflictions he's had over his course of his life. Let's see, um, dysfunctional family. 3:02 He suffered some verbal, emotional, even physical abuse. Right. Uh, multiple attempts, uh, on his life. Right. L- lam- um, his wife and children almost drown. Mm-hmm. Uh, and then he gets to the promised land. 3:19 "Oh, we made it." No, um, [laughs] he experiences wars. I mean, that's bad enough, but he's not just going up against Laman and Lemuel, he's got to wield the sword against his nephews. Yeah. 3:33 I mean, he probably suffered from some degree of PTSD. I, I- Yeah. Um, he's a refugee. Mm-hmm. I think he, I, I think there's something really stunning here. 3:45 Well, he, so he says, "I've had many afflictions in the course of my days." I love this word, "Nevertheless, having been highly favored of the Lord in all my days, yea, having a great knowledge of..." 3:56 Here's what I love, "Of the goodness and the mysteries of God." How, how is it possible for Nephi to say that God is so good after all he's been through? 4:10 Uh, he, he knows that his brothers, Laman and Lemuel, have clearly left the covenant path, and all Laman and Lemuel's descendants. 4:17 He knows that even his own descendants, his great-great-grandkids, are gonna leave the covenant path. 4:23 He sees a vision of the last days where there's only gonna be a few members of the church, and yet he's just praising God and so grateful for God. I, I think it's because he knows of the covenants of the Lord. 4:35 He knows of God's hesed, the Hebrew word for covenant loyalty, God's loving kindness, his mercy, that God doesn't give up on his children easily. Even if they go astray in this life, 4:49 uh, the gathering's happening on both sides of the veil. Yeah. In fact, when, the moment Jesus dies on the cross, Peter tells us that Jesus went and preached to the spirits that were disobedient. Mm-hmm. 5:03 This is really powerful because each of us could stop right now and have a long list of ways that we have had afflictions in our lives. 5:13 And as fallen nature humans, when we have affliction, we might begin to think, "Is there a God? Can I trust God?" 5:22 And yet, if we created another list of all the ways that we have seen God's hand in our lives, of where he has delivered us, and he has been faithful to his promises, that also is likely a very long list. 5:36 And one of the things I love about the Book of Mormon is that it's a record of God's mercy. 5:44 And so if there's a time in your life you're feeling overwhelmed by affliction, you might take courage from the stories that you find in the scriptural record about God's ongoing mercy to other people who also dealt with affliction. 6:00 And you might then record for yourself how God has delivered you, how God has helped you overcome affliction or endure to the end. 6:10 And then your own personal record becomes a form of a personal scripture that perhaps could be valuable to family members. But this is a powerful way. 6:19 I mean, we're, we haven't even left the first verse, and we get this powerful witness that, yes, life has afflictions. Nevertheless, 6:29 having been highly favored of the Lord in all my days, having a great knowledge of the goodness. Notice that word good again. The underlying word might be Nephi. And the mysteries of God. 6:39 Therefore, I make a record of my proceedings in my days. 6:44 And as we move on in chapter one, he begins by setting the context that there's conflict in Jerusalem, prophets have been sent, the people are not listening to God's word as well as they should. And Lehi, 6:58 we sometimes miss it, right here in verse five in the print edition, 'cause you have to turn the page, and so the verse kind of gets split over two pages, 7:06 that Lehi goes forth with all his heart to, to pray on behalf of his people. And as he prays, he, 7:16 as he prays to the Lord, verse six, "There came a pillar of fire and dwelt upon a rock before him, and he saw and heard much. And because of the things which he saw and heard, he did quake and tremble exceedingly." 7:28 Now, we often miss this in the modern day, but in the ancient world, for the Bible people, God was often symbolized by fire. 7:38 So if you think about when Moses goes out to the wilderness and he sees the burning bush, his first encounter with Jehovah, or when God is delivering the Israelites out of Egyptian captivity, it's a pillar of fire that guides them through the wilderness. 7:57 So often, fire is a reference for God's presence. So this would would've been very powerful and overwhelming for Lehi to realize, "I'm having a direct encounter with Jehovah himself." 8:08 And of course, and he sees numberless concourses of angels praising God, and he sees this amazing vision of God delivering a book, and that book going forth to teach people truth. Kind of sounds like Joseph Smith. Yeah. 8:22 There a lot, a lot of similarities. Joseph, he says in one of his accounts that when the Father and the Son appeared to him, he thought the leaves and the trees were gonna catch on fire. Yeah. 8:32 I love that connection because the restoration begins with the First Vision and then the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. Mm-hmm. Those two things predate everything else that happens in the church. 8:43 And Nephi begins his record here with something similar of a first vision. 8:49 Now, it's possible Lehi had had some visions before that, but the Book of Mormon begins in verse five, six, and seven with a first vision, and there's a book, and there's conversion that's happening, and it's a book that teaches both about woe as well as how God is going to bring, uh, his love and goodness to the world. 9:07 And this convinces Lehi that he needs to go out and share with people. And I gotta say, that to me, if I suddenly felt like I had to go stand out on the public square and call people out, it would be a little terrifying. 9:24 And I imagine that Lehi, who, w- Jerusalem, how big is Jerusalem? Maybe 30,000 people? We're not exactly sure. It wasn't that big back in 600 BC. So you're probably gonna know a lot of the people. 9:35 If you're gonna stay on the street corner to preach, you're probably going to know that a lot of these people are your friends and neighbors, and it's gonna be hard to have to say things that perhaps, uh, they're gonna be angry about. 9:47 In fact, how do they respond? Well, especially the fact that 9:52 Lehi and, not just Lehi, but Jeremiah, we know of at least nine prophets at this time period, and they all, according to verse four, these many prophets are all giving the same message that this is shocking for them, that Jerusalem's gonna be destroyed. 10:09 Yeah. W- w- why is that shocking? Because you, you have Jeremiah, and I- these, these prophets for centuries have been saying that Jerusalem was gonna be Zion, and this is where all nations would be gathered. 10:22 They would flow to the t- the house of the Lord, Isaiah 2:2. And Laman and Lemuel, they're not dummies. They, they know about these prophecies. 10:32 And for their dad, who they're thinking is a little cuckoo, like, "Wait a minute, Dad, the scriptures have been saying that we're supposed to gather here." 10:40 And according to the scripture record at least, the only temple at that time in the world would've been in downtown Jerusalem. 10:46 In their backyard, they have the temple that was built by Solomon, and that's where you gather. And now, "Dad, you're saying you got a vision that 10:56 w- instead of gathering and making covenants in, with the Lord in His holy house, now we're leaving? That doesn't make sense." But again, in verse four, 11:06 many prophets have made it clear that, "No, because of your wickedness, we have a change here now, new revelation. It's time to leave for safety." 11:17 And that would've been contrary to the, the Bible, Old Testament theology up to that point. Mm-hmm. I- in fact, in some ways, it'd be a form of treason. 11:26 To claim that Jerusalem's gonna fall would almost be a verbal attack against the state or the government. 11:33 And also, there's this view, so maybe that's a form of treason, so therefore you should execute somebody who's treasonous. That might be one reason people wanted to kill Lehi and other prophets like Jeremiah. 11:44 There's also the other idea that in the Book of Deuteronomy, there's this discussion of, well, if there's a false prophet who falsely prophesies, you should kill him. 11:53 And so the people are like, "Well, you're falsely prophesying. Jerusalem cannot fall." And so that's false prophecy to say that. "Well, therefore, we're going to kill you." 12:01 So there's all this swirling mess, and we get to this highlight- This is a deeply important verse. Uh, I believe it's one of several incredible thesis statements that Nephi delivers to us. 12:15 1 Nephi 1:20, and I'm gonna jump to the middle of the verse. 12:19 And he says, "But behold, I, Nephi, will show unto you," give you evidence, "that the tender mercies of the Lord are over all those whom he hath chosen because of their faith to make them mighty even unto the power of deliverance." 12:37 So, Nephi, now writing this story decades after all these experiences, has a testimony of what God does to deliver. 12:48 His hesed, his mercy, his covenantal nature to deliver salvation to those who choose through faith to receive it. 12:58 Nephi has this witness and testimony, and if you read carefully in 1 Nephi in particular and look for evidence, where does Nephi back up this statement? And you can look at every story he puts in here 13:13 backs up the statement. And then the invitation is, okay, can I run that test in my own life? Do I have evidence that God delivers the faithful? 13:24 Because I've seen it in church history, around the world, among my friends, my family, and I see this as an invitation for us individually to say, "I want to join with Nephi and also declare that the tender mercies of the Lord are over all those whom he hath chosen because of their faith or their faithfulness to make them mighty even unto the power of deliverance." 13:46 I wonder if this tender mercy and the Lord's covenant is giving Lehi hope, because he's shown in vision in verse 13 that Jerusalem's gonna be destroyed. He's lived there his whole life. 14:03 He's got, his mom and dad maybe are still alive, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends. And he sees that they're gonna be destroyed by the Babylonians. 14:13 And yet if you jump down here to verse 15, it says that, "His whole soul did rejoice and his whole heart was filled because of the things that he had seen," and you're like, "How? This, this seems a little [laughs] 14:29 uh, how is that possible?" It reminds me of when President Henry B. Eyring shared in general conference, he said, "I, I was wo- worried that some of the decisions that family members were making, that 14:42 I thought that maybe it wasn't gonna be possible that we all were gonna be able to be in heaven." Mm-hmm. And then he says, "A prophet of the Lord counseled me and said, 'You're worrying about the wrong thing. 14:51 You just keep your covenants and the arrangements in heaven will work out.'" Mm-hmm. And I think Lehi sees this tender mercy. Y- we never lose hope- Mm-hmm... in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Yeah, it's about trusting God. 15:08 Yeah. That God, with His hesed, his everlasting love and mercy, he is covenantally faithful, and we cannot stop him from being covenantally faithful to us, of to offering us the means of salvation. 15:23 We can walk away from it, but it's always there. And it, I'm not trying to say that, I'm not trying to promote universalism, where God's just gonna sweep under the rug any sins. No. 15:34 But I think his mercy is maybe bigger than sometimes we might think. And what you're pointing out here is that Lehi seems to capture this, even in the face of the, the, the, the threat that Jerusalem is going to fall. 15:47 That's, like, a significant thing. It's a, Jerusalem's a pretty mighty city. Significant walls. They, they had been protected 100 years before from the largest army the world had known at that point, the Assyrians. 15:58 And so people had strong evidence to say, "Oh, God's gonna protect this city. This city cannot fall. All is well in Zion." And yet Lehi sees God has different plans. 16:09 And even though the city will not turn out the way Lehi may have wanted, he recognizes with God's plan, he can have faith and trust. 16:18 Another thing that would've made this hard to leave for Laman and Lemuel, oh, and even for Lehi and Nephi and Sariah, is that i- in chapter two, is it okay if we jump to chapter two? Yeah. 16:29 Verse four says, "And it came to pass that he," Lehi, "departed into the wilderness and he left his house," and notice this, "and the land of his inheritance." 16:41 And Laman and Lemuel repeatedly murmur, "Hey, we've left the land of our inheritance." I don't think they're just talking about, oh, when Dad died, we were gonna get all his stuff. Mm-hmm. 16:50 This has theological implications that, that go back to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 16:56 When, when they made covenants with God, they're told that their posterity will be as the stars in the heavens and the, the sands of the sea, and that their posterity would inherit the land, which at the heart of it, is Jerusalem. 17:12 Mm-hmm. And wait a minute, we're supposed to get this f- I mean, that's part of the reason we see a lot of the conflict in Israel today. It's al- it's about this land, and now we, we're supposed to leave it? 17:25 But that goes contrary to the covenant. It's like they feel like they're, are we walking away from God, walking away from the covenant? 17:32 If God is the God of that land, and that's where we are in covenant with him, how do we stay loyal to God if we're walking away from the land that he's the landowner of? Exactly. 17:44 But of course, we learn that there's revelations in scripture to say, well, God actually is the owner of all the land everywhere, and there's multiple lands of promises, and God can establish people wherever he chooses. 17:57 Well said. And sometimes we have to have a larger geographic perspective and not limit God's salvation to a very specific geography. I like that. So yeah, they head off into the wilderness, and w- 18:11 They get down to the Red Sea and this might be a couple hundred miles of a journey, and it's pretty rough territory and, geographically and geologically to get down to this spot. 18:23 And they camp themselves in a valley, and this is where Lehi takes the time to deliver some additional instruction to his sons, Laman and Lemuel. Uh, we jump down into verse, uh, nine, 18:37 and they're next to this creek or river that flows into the sea, and Lehi says to Laman, "O that thou mightest be like unto this river, continually running into the fountain of all righteousness." 18:51 Then he spake unto Lemuel, "O that thou mightest be like unto this valley, firm and steadfast, and immovable in keeping the commandments of the Lord." 18:59 I just love the tender nature of Lehi as a father, and I can imagine Sariah right next to him sharing this loving message with, loving message with these two children who they have seen are struggling. 19:13 And we have to kind of back out just a bit. Like, it would be hard for anybody to have to leave their, their friends behind, their resources. 19:22 And Laman and Lemuel are loved by their parents, and their parents recognize that it's our need to continue to teach them how to be aligned with God, even in the midst of their afflictions of having lost all, having walked away from Jerusalem. 19:37 Mm-hmm. And then can you imagine how devastating it is to Sariah and Lehi, where here in verse 11 19:49 it says, "Laman and Lemuel did murmur in many things against their father." And the word murmur means to complain, like, about doing the dishes, right? No. [laughs] Murmur is much 20:03 m- more than just being like Eeyore, where we complain, "Oh, it's probably gonna rain today," or, "Church is so boring." Being negative and critical is not, doesn't capture the real meaning of murmur. 20:19 It, the, it comes from the Hebrew word lun, which refers to an open and a public and a vocal rebellion against authority. Hmm. 20:32 And anytime we openly and repeatedly rebel against authority, especially priesthood authority like the, the prophetic mantle that Lehi has, we're, we're just inviting Satan to have a front row seat in our life. 20:47 I mean, Laman and Lemuel, they had a, they had some goodness to them. They clearly kept the law of chastity. They know something about the law of sacrifice. Um, and yet their f- their spiritual fatal flaw was that 21:03 they murmured against prophetic auth- authority. In fact, in some ways, they wanted to assert or overtake that authority and keep it all to themselves. 21:14 In fact, if you look at Nephi's record, it was written in part to give a justification of why Nephi was granted the authority over this new nation. Oh. So it's Lehi and then Nephi. 21:30 And part of what Nephi is trying to narrate here is that because of his faithfulness, and because of God's faithfulness, God chose Nephi, the unexpected younger brother, to have authority in the family. 21:47 Have we ever seen this story before in the Old Testament? [laughs] Where the youngest son or a younger child ends up being put into authority? I mean, that's- Over and over again. Yeah. 21:56 It's Isaac, it's Jacob, it's Joseph, it's even King David. And so there is this tension about who has authority, and Laman and Lemuel are attacking the authority, the prophetic and patriarch authority- Hmm... 22:12 of Lehi and Sariah. The prophet is being led by God. So ultimately, Laman and Lemuel are not just attacking Lehi and his authority. They're basically rejecting God, who is the ultimate patriarch who has authority. 22:29 So murmuring against God is a form of what we saw Lucifer doing, which is trying to overthrow, in the premortal life, God's authority. Lucifer was the first murmurer, given this, uh, Hebrew concept that you've shared. 22:46 I love how Nephi, I, I imagine Nephi even 22:50 maybe w- I think we've all been tempted to murmur against priesthood authority, whether it's a bishop or a c- even though our Relief Society president doesn't have priest key, she has priesthood authority, 23:04 and because we're mortals, it can get messy sometimes. We hear and we see things that they say and do, and it, we have that temptation to murmur. And now, of course, there's nothing wrong with having, uh, 23:18 disagreements and to have difficult conversations with people when we disagree. But it's when we start murmuring that we start losing the Spirit, right? 23:29 And I love what Nephi does here in verse 16 because he's wrestling with this as well, but he says in the middle of it, "I did cry unto the Lord, and behold he did visit me and did soften my heart that I did believe all the words which had been spoken by my father. 23:48 Wherefore, I did not rebel against him." Hmm. 23:53 If we want to overcome the temptation of murmuring, we, we have to go to the Lord and ask for His help so that we can sustain not just the prophets and apostles, but all of those in the, the church the Lord's given authority to guide us. 24:11 So we are gonna move on to chapter three where we get some The, the narrative accelerates because there's a plot twist. 24:19 They're out in the wilderness, they think, "We're heading out," and yet we get this message, "Go back." It's like, wait, hold on. Mm. We just spent all this time leaving, and now we have to go back to get something. 24:31 We've all joked about the fact, you might be on some kind of long trip somewhere, and you're halfway into it and you might tease somebody, "Oh, my gosh, I forgot my toothbrush or my comb." 24:41 By the way, if I forget my comb now, it usually is not too big of a problem with, uh- [laughs]... the little amount of hair I need to actually comb. And you might ask, "Well, wait, what is God thinking? 24:51 Why didn't he just have them do this in the first place?" Now, have you ever had a time in your life where something happened and you think, "Huh, if I was in charge, I think it should've happened like this. 25:01 And so I'm gonna go counsel God about how he's running his show." And you might say, "Well, Lord, you should've just had them grab the scriptures and Ishmael's family before they left town." 25:12 But instead you get this incredible story where, remember, 1 Nephi 1:20, Nephi says, "I'm gonna give you evidence of how God delivers the faithful. 25:22 His tender mercies are over all those whom he hath chosen because of their faith to make them mighty, even under the power of deliverance." And that's the story that, this is evidence, this story is evidence of that. 25:34 As he is asked by his father, "Go back with your brothers," and the command is to go get the plates. Now, God did not tell them every specific how. He just simply said, "Here's the what." 25:47 Is it okay if we jump to chapter four? Because I love what you just said, Taylor. 25:51 They have no idea how they're gonna get these brass plates from Laban, this powerful ruler, and I love in r- chapter 4, verse 6, doesn't this just describe all... 26:05 I mean, not that today we need to go get brass plates, but the Lord asks us to do difficult things, and sometimes we're like, "I don't know how to go about it," and it gets messy, and sometimes we make mistakes and we feel like, "Oh, man, why wasn't I more in tune?" 26:20 But maybe we've been more in tune than we sometimes think. Notice here in chapter 4, verse 6, "And I," Nephi, "was led by the Spirit, not knowing beforehand the things which I should do." 26:36 And we know that the first attempt didn't work, the second attempt didn't work to get, and the- And they're all reasonable attempts. Like, "Hey, could we just have the plates?" They get run out. 26:46 "Well, what if we give you a bunch of resources?" They get run out again, and now they've lost a bunch of stuff. And those are all super reasonable, and again, God did not tell them how. 26:55 I just find it absolutely phenomenal that Nephi, after being beat by his brothers, he's like, "I'm going back into the city. And it's nighttime, but I'm gonna go figure something out." 27:05 That just seems, from a rational standpoint, foolhardy. Like, why not at least till the s- wait till the sun has risen or something? But walking around a dark city, remember, there's no streetlights. 27:18 So th- this just seems, like, very challenging. Mm. Difficult. What does he think he's gonna do in the middle of the night? Yeah. 27:25 And I wonder if in the moment, Nephi probably looked, he was probably thinking, "I don't know if I was very in tune with the Spirit. Uh, how, we almost got killed. We lost all our gold and silver." 27:37 But it's decades later when he looks back and reflects, "You know what? Actually, I was," he writes, "I was led by the Spirit." 27:47 They were learning experiences, and sometimes when we, I see it all the time with, um, young adults at Utah Valley Institute when I, whe- that, when I teach them, and they're like, "I started taking this major, and I spent all this time and money, and then I realized, oh, I'm supposed to take this major." 28:05 Mm. And they feel like they've, they weren't in tune with the Spirit. No, it was a learning experience. Mm-hmm. And the Lord is guiding them. 28:12 Yes, it was painful, but the Lord's still guiding us, maybe more than we realize. So we all know the story that Nephi encounters Laban drunk on the street, and he has this wrestle with the Spirit. 28:25 He's actually constrained. It's an interesting word, that constrain might be the closest thing to encouragement without violating somebody's personal agency. Mm-hmm. 28:36 And of course, as we know, uh, Nephi slays Laban and gets the plates, takes the sword, and also, uh, 28:46 gets Zoram, this, the servant, who his descendants, or people who claim descent from him in the Book of Mormon, play an important role. 28:53 And this story has a lot of interesting resonances with other stories from the Old Testament. 28:59 We're not gonna go into all detail here, but if you're interested in, like, doing a comparison between Old Testament stories, you might ask yourself, how is Nephi like a Moses going up against Pharaoh? 29:12 So Laban would be like the Pharaoh character, and Nephi is like Moses. And how often does Nephi narrate their lives as like the children of Israel being led by Moses out into the wilderness, being led by God? 29:23 All the time. Or you might look at, how is Nephi like patriarch Jacob, who encountered his own father-in-law named Laban? 29:33 And Laban, his father-in-law, kept tricking patriarch Jacob out of Jacob's rights and privileges and even resources, and even delayed Jacob's ongoing progress. Hmm, how does that connect? 29:50 So some really interesting connections. And then finally, there's also seems to be a subtle connection that Nephi has made between himself and David, the shepherd boy, taking on Goliath. 30:02 That Laban, well, uh, we'll just brief- briefly just share this one. Nephi, 30:07 like David, is the youngest son, sent by the father to help the older brothers on a very difficult, perilous mission, to go confront a military character who's standing in the way of God's covenant people making progress. 30:21 And the young son, who has essentially no military experience, goes forth trusting God, essentially unarmed, takes on the giant- 30:30 Overcomes the giant and kills the giant with the giant's own sword, cuts off the giant's head, and keeps the sword, and that becomes the symbol and emblem of that young man becoming the king of the people. 30:46 Those are fascinating parallels. I love that. Should we jump to chapter five? Yeah. The conclusion. Yep. While the sons are gone, Sariah, it's interesting, she doesn't murmur. 31:03 We have to acknowledge that, but she does complain. And the Hebrew word for complain, when it's used in the K- the Old Testament, in the KJV, comes from the Hebrew ragan. Mm-hmm. 31:17 It's not a good thing to, certainly not to murmur, and it's not good to complain against the prophet either, but it's not quite as bad as murmuring. To complain is to, 31:26 behind the scenes, in, in private, to speak against authority. Mm-hmm. And she's a mama bear. Yeah. 31:34 And even though Laman and Lemuel, they're, they've caused her a lot of grief, sh- they're still her baby boys, and she complains here in chapter five. What verse is that in? Verse, yep, here it is, verse three. 31:48 "And after this manner of language did my mother complain against my father." What parent, what spouse, who cares deeply about something going on in the family, especially with the kids, might feel a need to complain? 32:05 Like, that's a very common human thing to feel. Now, it's very interesting. 32:10 In the Book of Mormon, I once was, like, highlighting what's called direct speech, meaning this is where you'd put quotation marks, where you've said, where you indicate somebody is speaking here, and this is exactly what they said. 32:22 And I came across the fact that we only have two direct speech moments from Sariah in the entire Book of Mormon, and one of them is right after these moments of complaining, where she is worried about her sons coming back. 32:38 And then in verse eight, after they've returned, this is one of the direct speaking moments, and she says, "Now I know of a surety that the Lord hath commanded my husband to flee into the wilderness. 32:49 Yea, I also know for a surety that the Lord hath protected my sons and delivered them out of the hands of Laban, and given them power whereby they could accomplish the thing which the Lord hath commanded them. 33:00 And after this manner of language did she speak." Now, it turns out that names in the Book of Mormon may be thematically connected to 33:14 the stories in which those people are embedded in, in the stories, and the meaning of their name might actually tell us something about the themes of their lives or the story. 33:24 And Sariah's name comes from two Hebrew words, sar, which means prince, and then the short form of the word for Jehovah, or the I-A-H. So Sariah could mean something like Jehovah is a prince or a commander. 33:41 Now, notice if you look carefully here, how many times you have the phrase command show up in this verse, verse eight? Actually twice, at the beginning and the end. It's actually a chiastic structure. It's in parallel. 33:57 And in the middle, you get three descriptions of what a great commander or prince can do. To deliver and imp- sorry, uh, to protect and to deliver and to give them power whereby they could accomplish the things. 34:15 And so right in the middle of that chiastic structure is a definition of the Lord is a commander or prince who delivers, empowers, and protects. And that's what Sariah's name means. The Lord is a prince or a commander. 34:31 And it's interesting that of all the things that Nephi chooses to quote from his mom, this is one thing that he chooses. 34:41 And it's to represent that her name is a witness of the goodness and power of God to deliver the faithful. Mm. Now, I wonder if you look back at 1 Nephi 3:7, 34:53 where Nephi says to his father, "Behold, I, Nephi, said unto my father," now remember, Sariah's name means the Lord is a commander or a prince. 35:06 Now listen for Sariah's name and what Nephi says to his father about the task of going back and getting the plates. 35:12 "I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded," Sariah, "for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, 35:22 save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he," the Lord, "hath commanded them." So it turns out that Sariah's name may be 35:32 subtly embedded in that verse three times, as Nephi is saying something to his dad, Sariah, Sariah, Sariah. Mm. 35:41 That his mom's own name is the meaning of his own testimony, that the Lord commands, and he will deliver anybody who's faithful to those commands. Beautiful. What, what a contrast. 35:54 We have Sariah, who has learned to sustain priesthood authority, even though it was very difficult. And then you have the foil, the contrast, Laman and Lemuel, who the word murmur appears 19 times in 1 Nephi alone. 36:12 The w- in contrast, the word atonement, zero. Faith, eight times. Repentance, 10 times. I don't think Nephi is trying to say that faith, repentance, and Jesus Christ's atonement isn't important. 36:26 But he's right out of the gates, he's wants to tell us here in the last days We need, if we wanna find safety and blessings for ourselves and our families and our descendants, we can't murmur against prophetic authority. 36:41 We need to be like Sariah, and e- even when it's hard, learn to sustain those with priesthood authority. Well, this ties in back to some of the themes we've been talking about. 36:52 Nephi begins his record that he had suffered with affliction in his life, but yet the tender mercies of the Lord had been in his life. 37:01 So this connects to Nephi's theme of, "The tender mercies of the Lord are over all those whom he hath chosen, because of their faith to make them mighty, even unto the power of deliverance." 37:12 His first verse, he talks about the afflictions he's had, but nevertheless, he's known the goodness, remember the word Nephi, the goodness of God. 37:20 And so we have these contrasts that you have the same people essentially having the same experience. Laman and Lemuel choose to attack God and attack God's prophetic witnesses. 37:33 Nephi, who's suffering just like them, he chooses, like his mother and his father and his sisters, and even his brother Sam, to say, "I'm gonna choose to trust God, to be faithful to God, and to not murmur. 37:48 And therefore, I will see the longstanding blessings that God has offered for everybody if they choose to be faithful, even if they're suffering affliction." 37:59 So I think what you're pointing out is this subtle message that, yes, life is hard. Okay? It is really hard. But murmuring will not solve the problems. 38:09 Attacking the authority of God or his prophetic servants or people who are in positions to serve us, that actually is not a sign of faithfulness and will not help us to experience God's tender mercies. 38:22 But if we choose to endure to the end, we can see, like Nephi and others, that God's tender mercies are over all those whom he hath chosen because of their faith to make them mighty, even unto the power of deliverance. 38:35 And we encourage you to look for his tender mercies this week in your life. 38:39 [gentle music]
