Day 53 The Plan of Salvation and God's Goodness

In Matthew 5:13, Jesus tells his followers that they are the salt of the earth, and in the same sentence offers a warning that savorless salt is good for nothing. Join me in an attempt to be savory salt as I share each day one verse of scripture and one small thought. Perhaps this small daily emphasis can lead to greater savor in your life and ultimately you and I can be savory salt.

Hello, my friends and family, wherever you're listening from. Thank you for joining me and know that I am cheering for your every success. Welcome to day 53 on our 365 day journey to read the Book of Mormon.

We are into 2 Nephi chapter 9 and Jacob is on a roll. Today, if you follow your reading, you're going to read 2 Nephi 9:7-15, and we're going to get right into some of the doctrine here with the plan of salvation. This gets me really excited.

I wanted to give you a little heads up on chapter 9. I kind of noticed this time going through. I'm sure that there's some seminary teacher or institute teacher in the world that noticed this and created some sort of way to remember it.

But I seem to notice here for the first time, I guess in putting this together, that chapter 9 has 'ohs' and 'woes'. Jacob spends some time here doing some 'ohs', and the 'ohs' are like he teaches a little bit of doctrine, and then he's like, 'Oh, how wonderful is this? Oh, how great the plan!' Oh, how great is our Lord!

Those are his 'ohs'. So he has little teaching moments, and then he goes, 'Oh, isn't this wonderful?' And then he has some 'woes', but the 'woes' were not to yet. So I won't worry about that yet.

But the 'woes' are like, 'Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Don't do these things! Whoa, whoa!

Right?' Like he's stopping the horse. Like, 'Whoa, whoa!' So, just a little fun thing to pay attention to inside of chapter nine: the 'ohs' and the 'woes' of Jacob. Now, let's get into the verse today.

And when we get into the verse, I'm going to have a little bit of a memory from my mission days. Coming back on the backside of the verse here. We're going to do verse 10 today inside of our reading.

And verse 10 says this. Oh, here's our 'oh', right? Woohoo!

Oh, oh, how great the goodness of our God, who prepareth a way for our escape from the grasp of this awful monster. calls death and hell. And I can remember teaching on my mission. We used to have—this is going to date me a little bit—but we used to have a flip chart that we used to kind of teach this concept inside of what the Atonement of Christ did.

And on that flip chart we used to draw a little pit. And one of the pits was this death of the body, right? This—this physical death.

And then we drew another little pit, and it was the pit of the death of the spirit, this death and hell that we're talking about. And I remember having, we had a flip chart that kind of had it drawn out, but there were times where our flip charts weren't with us. And so we would draw this out on a little piece of paper with these little pits and this little stick figure coming along to the pits.

And he didn't know how to get over them. And then we would talk about the Atonement of Christ, helping this little person get over the pit of physical death and then helping the person get over the pit of spiritual death. That's exactly what we're talking about here.

And Jacob is saying, 'Oh, how great the goodness of God!' Now I want to give you a reference and I'm going to leave it as a link inside of the podcast episode here. In today's missionary resources, you have "Preach My Gospel". And I would encourage you to go into lesson two on the chapter about what am I supposed to teach as a missionary.

I think it's chapter three. And I'm going to send you the link to that inside of this because "Preach My Gospel" is going to walk through the plan of salvation in lesson two. And you're going to notice that inside of there there are several readings for 2 Nephi 9.

Go figure! And I'd love for you to dive into that as well, as kind of a supplement as you're reading chapter nine, to help you better understand some of the things that are happening inside of Jacob's explanation here. So today, my friends, is an 'oh': 'Oh, how great the goodness of our God, who prepareth a way for our escape from the grasp of this awful monster!' I know the Lord prepares a way for us to overcome the challenges that we experience both physically and spiritually inside of our lives today.

That's all I have today, my friends. Remember that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass. Keep it small, keep it simple, and always seek to be savory salt.

I'll be here tomorrow. I hope you are too.