2.148 They Could Not Understand the Word of God

In Matthew 5:13, Jesus calls us the salt of the earth, a bold reminder that our lives are meant to carry his flavor, his truth, and his love to the world. Join me each day to explore one verse of scripture and one thought, striving to stay full of savor and truly live as savory salt. Hello, my friends.

It is great to have you with me. Today, let's be anxiously engaged in a good cause and bring to pass much righteousness. Kind of weird timing to be bringing this one up inside of the recording time of year that it is, but let's talk about The Santa Clause.

Now I'm not talking about Santa Claus the man and I know that I might be going on a limb here because I have international listeners that may or may not have even the ability to see what I'm talking about. But let's talk about The Santa Clause. It is a movie that was made, I don't know, a hundred years ago.

It seems like a hundred years ago. It's really not that long ago. But it was made and it stars Tim Allen as a normal dad, right, that's raising a son.

And through a series of crazy events he becomes Santa Claus. Okay. Now the movie is all about him embracing this and figuring this out.

And there's a piece inside of here that we use regularly at our house that I wanted to share with you guys because it feeds right into our readings this week. Now we are reading Doctrine and Covenants sections 51-57 and Mosiah chapters 26 through Alma 1. We're actually going to be in Mosiah 26 today.

So I wanted to get you rolling in your Book of Mormon reading as well as your Doctrine and Covenants reading this week. Let's dive in to the movie a little bit and then let's get to our verse for today. Inside the movie, as I mentioned, the whole movie is about Tim Allen and others accepting that he is Santa Claus.

Okay. I promise this is coming around to a gospel idea here, but it gets to a point at the end of the movie where they say a line, they say, seeing is not believing. Believing is seeing.

And what they're talking about there is throughout the movie, others have seen the changes in this character. They've seen him grow his white beard out. They've seen him get his jolly belly and all these things.

They've seen those things and yet they haven't believed in it. And so they didn't really understand that he was becoming Santa Claus. Now what does that mean for us in our verse for today?

Let's take a look at it. This actually also connects to season one. If you want to go and hear it from a different perspective and a different verse's perspective, you can go to season one, episode 139, where we talk about Mosiah 26:1.

Today we're going to look at Mosiah 26:3. Very short, talking about this rising generation of that time, but it says this: "And now because of their unbelief they could not understand the Word of God and their hearts were hardened." Now last time we talked about the chicken and egg about belief and understanding versus understanding and belief. But I want to dive into verse 3 here through the lens of The Santa Clause.

The Bible says, "seeing is not believing, but believing is seeing." Look in this verse again. Because of their unbelief, they could not understand the Word of God. Isn't that an interesting way to say that?

Because they didn't believe in what they were seeing, they could not understand the Word of God. The Word of God was in front of them. It was preached.

It was available. So, we have two different ways to approach this one. You can look at Alma 32, where it talks about even if you can't believe, you could just have a desire to believe.

It opens the door for the Spirit of the Lord to touch your heart and to begin to help you. All of these are references to God and His word. But without that belief in place, they could not understand.

And then what are the consequences afterwards? Ultimately, their hearts were hardened. My friends, if you can't find inside of yourself a belief in what you're studying, then go to Alma's level that he says and find a desire to believe.

Yesterday when we talked about finding your own testimony and standing on your own foundation with Christ rather than on. I love the phrase that we get from The Santa Clause. I'm sure there's other movies and it's probably even out of some professional or personal development book or something.

But my friends, seeing is not believing. People have seen angels perform miracles and not believed that it was angels perform miracles. People have seen miracles from the scriptures and not believed in what it was because seeing is not believing.

Believing is seeing. May you and I hold our faith and belief in Jesus Christ so that our understanding in the Word of God can expand and can increase and can open the door to greater understanding for each of us. That's what I hope we can do today on Savory Salt.

That's all for today, my friends. Lift up your hearts and rejoice. Cleave into the covenants you have made and together we will be Savory Salt.