3.199 The Book of the Covenant Drives Action

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.

So it's come down to this moment in our readings this week. As we read 2 Kings 16 through 25, it's almost as if Josiah's story is this last great attempt to turn the hearts of the people of Israel back to the Lord. He does so for this.

Today we're going to focus on this light attempt, this spark, this last-ditch effort of Josiah. And then tomorrow we're going to wrap up the book of 2 Kings with a little bit of a connection as the temple and as Jerusalem are ultimately destroyed. And we kind of move into the second part of the Old Testament, a little bit of a retelling of several of those stories.

My friends, this week has been an interesting study for me. I've been all over the place looking at different talks, different ways that this story has been presented. I love Josiah's story.

I posed the question inside of our own family scripture study this week about what would your life look like if you just had no access to scriptures? It's been some interesting conversations as a family as we've done our scripture study through this week. And now we're going to sit inside of the power to kind of...

We want to come full circle as we started the week off with Alma and talking about his understanding of, look, sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is just bear testimony and use the Word of God. And that's what we see inside of the story of Josiah here, especially inside of our verse for today. It is 2 Kings chapter 23, verse 2.

Yesterday, we did 2 Kings chapter 22, verse 2. 2 Kings chapter 23, verse 2 says this: The King went up into the house of the Lord, and all the men of Judah, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem with him, and the priests, and the prophets, and all the people, both small and great. And he read in their ears all the words of the Book of the Covenant, which was found in the house of the Lord. Now I chose this as kind of this beginning piece because if you continue inside of 2 Kings chapter 23, what happens is he reads the words.

They find the law, right? This is the law of Moses. They find it.

It's been lost. Josiah just absorbs it. He's reading as much as he possibly can.

Maybe you've had that own experience in your life or maybe at a time as a missionary, you saw others that started to catch the Word of God and just couldn't stop. It consumed them. But the point I want to make here is that they didn't stop at consuming the Word of the Lord.

Verse 2 is only the beginning of what happens with these people. After they hear the words, after these words are shared with them, what does it do? It inspires and drives action, especially inside of Josiah.

He then turns to making covenants with the Lord. As he makes covenants and promises to walk with the Lord, he then turns to cleansing his life and really the people's life as he seeks to cleanse all of the groves in the high places that have been mentioned so many times in 2 Kings here. He cleans them all out.

And this is an interesting part here for us to look into our lives. My friends, there's so much inside of this. I got to share one piece inside of our family text thread.

My sister posted a section of President Nelson's talk from 2016 as he led the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles at that time. It's called "The Price of Priesthood Power" from April of 2016. Please take some time inside of it.

He talks about some of his fears that brethren in the Church today won't take the time to pay the price for priesthood power. And he says this inside of the talk: I urgently plead with each one of us to live up to our privileges as bearers of the priesthood. In a coming day, only those men who have taken their priesthood seriously by diligently seeking to be taught by the Lord Himself will be able to bless, guide, protect, strengthen, and heal others.

Only a man who has paid the price for priesthood power will be able to bring miracles to those he loves and keep his marriage and family safe now and throughout eternity. Then he goes in and he shares a few of the things about what it means to pay the price. He gets an incredible list.

How can we increase it? Faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience. How else can we increase it?

We need to pray from our hearts. Are you willing to search the Scriptures and feast on the words of Christ to study earnestly in order to have more power? My friends, the Word of God is powerful.

Do we rest the Scriptures, as they say? Do we put them aside or are we consuming them to the level that it drives us to action? Because that is what the Word of God can do in our lives.

I hope that you consume the Scriptures so much so that it drives you to action, to turn to the Lord, seek repentance, and seek to have the Spirit guide you and direct you every hour of every day. That is 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