3.036 They are the Workmanship of Mine Own Hands

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. Do you remember when you were a kid and you were perhaps building something like a Lego project or a house of cards that you would spend so much time to stack up only to have a friend or a sibling come along and knock it down, break it up?

How'd you feel? We're going to get into that eternal feeling today in Savory Salt. We're reading this week, Moses 7.

It is such an amazing chapter, my friends. I hope that you don't stop on the pieces at the beginning where Enoch and the Lord talk and then basically by verse 17, 18, 19, somewhere around there. Yeah, 18 is when Zion gets defined.

Well, you like, "wait, what? The rest of this chapter?" I thought this was just about Zion! And then we have this incredible conversation between God and Enoch.

The Lord is talking to him, and we have an interesting moment. And I think it's a moment that helps us better understand the Old Testament God. We tend to define the God of the Old Testament as harsh and as unforgiving and angry.

And that tends to be a lot of people's perspective of our Heavenly Father. And I think another incredible blessing that comes with the Book of Moses is this perspective, this conversation that He's going to have with Enoch after the city of Zion has been taken up. Okay, so it's been removed from the earth and really the only people left, you've got Noah building his ark on the earth and then all of the wicked people.

And that's what takes us to our verse for today because Enoch turns in this moment of looking down upon the earth to the Lord and he sees the Lord crying and he asks Him, what makes Him cry so much? Now the answer is several verses, so I'm not going to go into the full answer. I want you to spend some time in the answer.

But the beginning of his answer is verse 32. And he says this: "The Lord said unto Enoch: Behold, these thy brethren; they are the workmanship of mine own hands, and I gave unto them their knowledge in the day I created them; and in the Garden of Eden gave I unto man his agency." Then the verses continue. And as I mentioned, I want you to finish what the Lord's truly saying about the tears coming out of His eyes as He looks upon the earth and sees what man has done with the knowledge God gave them and the agency that He blessed them with.

Now, go back to that moment as a kid. See the destruction in front of you that's just occurred. Maybe it was—I like to build house of cards—so maybe it was a house of cards, and yet it got knocked over for whatever reason.

And there's sorrow there because you had created something. Maybe you had spent hours on a puzzle only to have someone come in and ruffle the puzzle. Maybe you'd spent hours on a Lego project only to have the Legos.

Now, make that feeling infinitely greater as the Lord looks down on the earth to see what man has done with their knowledge and agency. They've chosen wickedness. They've chosen darkness.

They've chosen sin. My friends, as we see the perspective of the Lord going into the Old Testament, I hope we can hold this perspective, this moment between Enoch and the Lord. So much that He was willing to send His Son as a sacrifice for that sin only amplifies my gratitude to Him for the work that He has done through His Son, Jesus Christ.

My friends, this is a powerful chapter that shows us the love of a Heavenly Father for each one of us. I hope that we can return that love, use the knowledge we've been blessed with and the agency we've been given to do good, to love one another and to truly lift each other along the path that the Lord has established for us. 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.