3.030 Where Will It Lead?

In Matthew 5, Jesus calls us the salt of the earth and the light of the world, reminding us that our lives are meant to preserve, illuminate, and point others to Him. This season on Savory Salt, we'll walk through the Old Testament, one verse and one thought each day. Perhaps these moments will add greater savor and brighter light to our lives as we seek to truly live as savory salt.

Hello my friends. It's a new day with new opportunities. Choose ye this day whom you will serve.

Inside of our readings this week, I wonder how much information Enoch needed to decide to walk with the Lord. We're reading this week Genesis chapter 5 and Moses chapter 6 and we're coming to the tail end of it. And I've really been kind of stuck here a little bit reading through Enoch's experiences.

Not stuck by any means in terms of his testimony, which is powerful. I hope you're enjoying that inside of Moses chapter 6, but really back to the invitation that the Lord gives him to walk with him. It seems like Enoch basically immediately adopts the practice of walking with the Lord.

And I landed on a talk that comes from President Oaks, although it was in 2004. So this would have been when he was Elder Oaks. And it comes from BYU Speeches.

I'll make sure the link is in here. And as I've mentioned before, sometimes I'm going to use talks inside of the Old Testament from modern day prophets and apostles as part of our scripture message for today. And that's what we're going to look at today is his talk.

It doesn't reference Enoch. It doesn't even use Enoch as a scriptural example. But I think what he teaches here is a principle that perhaps Enoch had a grasp of, and I think we could get a grasp of as well.

Well, I'm just going to read two parts of the talk here in separate pieces. First, he gives an example at the beginning of his talk, President Oaks does, a bad habit that started. He gives an example of a wife telling the story of her husband starting to drink.

And then he says this inside of it to kind of introduce his talk. He says, "Potentially destructive deviations often seem so small that some find it easy to justify just this once. When that temptation arises, as it will, I urge you to ask yourself, 'Where will it lead?' I have chosen that question as the title of my message today.

I will give some illustrations that teach the value of asking that question. I will also share some personal experiences that illustrate the long-term importance of some seemingly small differences in present choices." Then he goes on to give his talk and it's all revolving around the question of "Where will it lead?" I think the core principle here is worth digging into, especially through the story of Enoch. Enoch had an opportunity to say no, right?

He questioned why he was selected. Why me? "'I'm a lad and I'm slow of speech and the people hate me.'" Why me? And in the Lord's response, when he invited him to walk with him, Enoch still had a choice there to move forward or not.

And then he chose to walk with the Lord. Perhaps Enoch took the opportunity to pause and ask himself, "If I walk with the Lord, where will it lead?" Then a little bit further into the talk, President Oaks says this, as an example of things we encourage and where they will lead, consider the daily scripture study we've been taught to incorporate into our lives. "I can assure you that faithful observance of these guidelines will lead us closer to the Lord and their omission will lead us away from him." My friends, I hope inside of our Enoch reading here and an opportunity to apply it to our own lives, we will take the advice given to us here, the counsel from President Oaks, and as we face life choices, even choices that aren't necessarily wrong and right choices, but choices that have right and right, take an opportunity to look down the road and ask ourselves by making this choice, "Where will it lead?" I'm grateful for the opportunity to look down the road and lean into the spiritual promptings to see where my choices will lead me and which ones will take me closer to a relationship with my Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. That's all for today my friends.

You and I have come here for such a time as this. Step forward in faith and let's be savory salt. We will be here tomorrow and we hope you are too.