3.044 This is the Token of the Covenant

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 you this day whom you will serve. There are signs all around us.

Do you see them? And perhaps even deeper, do you heed them? We're continuing our reading this week with Genesis chapters 6 through 11 as well as Moses chapter 8.

And inside of it we get an interesting time here that has been passed on as one of these stories from Noah's time, with God making a covenant about the rainbow after the ark and His promise to never flood the Earth again. Before we get into our verse for today around that, I want to reflect for just a second on my childhood. One of my favorite things to do when we went to Temple Square.

And I don't know that it was necessarily often that we went. In my brain, it's like we went quite often, but I don't know how often we actually went as a child. But one of my favorite things to do was to go down to the Salt Lake Temple at Temple Square.

And I loved to walk around the temple and find on the outside of the temple the stars and the moon and the sun etched into the outside of the Salt Lake Temple. And if you've never seen that, perhaps you could pull up a picture of that or whatever. I love that.

I remember my parents teaching me about the kingdoms and celestial glory and all those aspects. But I just remember every time going and looking at those beautiful signs on the outside of the temple and thinking just as a little kid about what those signs and symbols meant and what they represented. And then that idea I think feeds into our study of the scriptures and it's going to especially feed into our study of the Old Testament as we take a look at this verse as well as many others continuing forward.

So with that being said, this little boy looking on the outside signs and symbols on the temple, let's look at our verse for today and see what we can see as well. Our verse is in Genesis 9, verse 17. And it says, "And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the Earth." Okay, now the Lord letting Noah know, "Hey, when you see this, this is a token.

This is a sign." If you look at the footnote of 'token,' the other word is 'sign.' Here a token. Here a sign. My friends, how much time do you spend in the scriptures looking at the signs and the tokens that the Lord has planted in there?

I want you to pause inside of that because the Old Testament can be an amazing adventure if you're looking for the. The Lord has for us to remember Him, remember the covenant, remember the temple. They're all over.

And so one of the things I wanted to just drop here along with this idea is perhaps just a way to remember some of the things that happened in the Old Testament. This is from some of my notes I've got kind of footnoted in my Gospel Library app from, what's this one, from 2022. So this has been several years ago.

Most likely this is from a Sunday school class with Sister Lori Denning. She's in our ward. She's awesome.

She's a professor and she's written books on the Old Testament, the New Testament. She's amazing. So Lori, if you ever hear this, thanks for being amazing and awesome in our ward.

But here's just a couple of notes about the Old Testament to help us remember. Names in the Old Testament are important. They are signs as well.

For example, Adam means earth and humanity. Eve means life. Enoch means dedicated.

Noah means rest. We know the Ark is a symbol, a sign of the temple, a floating place of safety for Noah and his family. So I want you to be mindful of this.

Take an opportunity, perhaps, just kind of Google names of the Old Testament and their meanings. Also, one other aspect to look at in these signs and tokens idea is that the Old Testament doesn't typically focus on physical attributes of people unless it's important to the story. These stories that they're telling, they typically just kind of telling the story and then they're like, and then this physical thing was important.

And you're like, oh, I should look at what that means. My friends, heeding the signs and the tokens the Lord has given, I just say this last little piece, and that is: take some time to go to the temple. Take some time to be in the temple.

Look at the pictures, look at the signs, experience the blessings, do the service, take the time to be there. And ask the Lord, "Show me the signs, help me remember." And I promise you doing so will lead you down a path of seeing more signs and more tokens that help you remember our Heavenly Father and His Son, 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.