3.048 I Have Heard Thee

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 this day whom you will serve.

And now it's time for embarrassing stories with Allen. My friends, we're reading this week Genesis chapters 12 through 17 and Abraham chapters 1 and 2. And I just got a quick question as we get started here.

Have you ever, because of your understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ through the Latter-day Saint lens, have you ever had a moment where you're talking with your other Christian friends and you said something that to them seemed completely out of context? Let me tell you a quick story as we get into our verse for today. We're going to stay in Abraham chapter 1 here and I want to take you back to my early days as a teacher.

This would be 20 years ago or so. I'm meeting with my team. I used to teach world history in high school and I was in Texas at the time.

We're meeting together as a team and we're trying to figure out how we're going to teach Abraham to high school sophomores through a lens that helps them realize that Abraham's role in modern religion is quite large. He's the father of the Hebrews, right, which is the Jews today, the father of Islam, the father of Christianity. He's got a major role to play.

And as we're talking as a group of teachers here, I said, you know, isn't it crazy that Abraham had his experience with his son? What context would that have put him in, knowing that he had the same experience with his father of being sacrificed? And the whole team looked at me like, "What are you talking about?" And it was at that time, my friends, that I realized my understanding of Abraham chapter 1 was not found in the book of Genesis or the Old Testament.

And so I was trying to make this empathizing moment, this, like, empathy for Abraham, because his dad tried to sacrifice him to false gods. And then he got asked by the Lord to sacrifice Isaac later in his life. My goodness!

Everyone looked at me like I was the craziest thing and I had to pause and explain to them modern scripture. So hopefully as we dive into this story a little bit, we can understand the additional scripture that puts into perspective Abraham's experiences as we understand them through the Old Testament later as well. Sorry, maybe you didn't get the humor inside of that, but it's a little bit of Pearl of Great Price humor, I guess.

My friends, our verse for today is Abraham chapter 1 verse 15, where Abraham is about to be on an altar to be sacrificed. And yes, it's Abraham on the sacrificial altar, not his son Isaac. And he's laying on a sacrificial altar here to false gods.

And verse 15 says this: The story continues that Abraham has a vision of Jehovah and that he is saved and taken out of that experience. And he has this miraculous intervention. The Lord heard his pleas.

I have to wonder if later when we get to the story where Abraham is commanded of the Lord to sacrifice his son Isaac, if he's not also pleading unto the Lord internally. We don't necessarily see it in our Old Testament scriptures, but is Abraham going to do the will of the Lord, pleading and praying for this exact moment again? Although one of those experiences is him laying on the altar, and the second experience is him holding the knife to fulfill the sacrifice.

My friends, the Lord hears our pleas and our prayers. He is aware of them. Continue to pray and ask for the Lord's hand in your life.

He will provide it. This context gives us a whole different perspective with yesterday's verse and Abraham's desire and seeking out to be a man of righteousness. To today, him experiencing the possibility of being sacrificed to a false god.

Abraham is right and primed in position to be a father of many nations and to continue to bless the world through his lineage. That's what we're going to get into the rest of this week as well. 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