3.068 Speak Peaceably

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.

George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson. Now while I use these American examples, I'm basically naming people from the time of the American Revolution. Drop you into their life 250 years ago.

How would you act versus the way it was normal for them to act back then? What would your speech be like? The reason I start off the episode today like this is because as we get further and further into the Old Testament, we can pause and look at it and go, 'What in the world is happening in this story?' There seems to be some crazy, shady, weird stuff going on amongst families, inside families, amongst tribes.

It can sometimes come across as simply weird to us. Well, I give the example to start off today because even 250 years ago, behaviors, speech, social mores would be different from us today, and yet the people we're reading about in the Old Testament would be several thousand years beyond that. So, my friends, as we're reading, I hope you are praying and inviting the Spirit of the Lord to help you understand what you're reading.

I hope you're taking time to dive in, to ask the Lord what from your studies of the Old Testament can help you better understand the Savior's Atonement, the role of the plan of salvation in your life, the role and responsibilities that you have to your Heavenly Father and He has to you. With that being said, we're reading this week Genesis chapters 37 through 41. Yes, according to Come Follow Me, we did skip some chapters as we go, and we are going to follow the Come Follow Me pacing.

So you'll want to bridge those gaps inside of your personal study as you're reading along. We're going to get into the story of Joseph, one of Israel's sons. It's one that's made popular.

It's a story that's made popular from Joseph and the coat of many colors, right? We're going to look at a part of his story today, and throughout this week, we'll look at his story a couple of different ways. This one I think is an interesting start to it.

As we are introduced to Joseph, we see that his brothers are angry at him for a very specific reason. Our verse is in Genesis 37, verse 4, and it says this: "And when his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably unto him." Now, my friends, the example that we give here, this one's an example of why all of Joseph's brothers hated him. It was because he was perceived to be, and it seems to be according to the scripture here, dad's favorite, right?

He even got a coat of many colors given to him by his dad. And yet as I thought about this, I thought, 'Man, what does this mean for us?' And this is what I could come up with. It may be a little bit of a curveball, but I'm going to try and connect it.

How do you feel when you see others in your neighborhood or in your life, perhaps others that work with you? How do you feel when you see them being successful when you aren't? It's a bit of a scarcity mentality and one that I've had in my life in the past, one that I tried to work on.

And so that's why it comes up here in Savory Salt. But it seems here that the brothers couldn't be happy with the love that they had from their father. Instead, they had to be mad at the love that their father had for their brother.

I think sometimes when we see the blessings of the Lord on others and other family members or other situations, we may get the feelings inside of us that stir us up to contention. We may get frustrated feeling like this. And I thought into it a little bit and I thought, 'You know what?

I've read something about this.' I landed on the very well-known conference talk from President Benson called "Beware of Pride." And in that talk, it was actually April of 1989. I make sure that I have a link here for you, but President Hinckley actually gave this talk for President Benson, but in it, he says this thought: "Pride is a sin that can readily be seen in others, but is rarely admitted in ourselves." Most of us consider pride to be a sin of those on the top, such as the rich and the learned. Step forward in faith, and let's be Savory Salt. We will be here tomorrow, and we hope you are too.